Living in the Present
by Citizen-of-Pompeii
Summary: The FBI's best analyst, one tech protégé, a second 'stay-at-home' tech, and a glorified soldier. They are the ones tasked with taking down Garcia Flynn. It seems simple, Flynn's the bad guy, take him out. But things get so much more complicated when a mysterious force known as Rittenhouse makes itself known. Right and wrong gets turned on its head and suddenly black looks white.
1. Another Failed Expedition

**Hi guys, I am back with my new Lucy and Wyatt fic. Actually, this will include Lucy and Wyatt, but it will actually include everyone. I will have some Rufus/Jiya because there are not enough fanfics out there about them, I will have our favorite anti-hero, Garcia Flynn. Overall, I am really excited about this, guys, I like this story and the places it could go a lot and I hope you do to. All mistakes are my own, sorry about the grammar, and I also do not own own Timeless. I would love feedback, so please just leave me a review after you read, happy reading!**

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The click of heels down the marble hallway was not in any way definitive. There was no way to tell who was wearing those heels unless one turned around and looked at the person wearing them. It could have been any number of people: Katerina, come to drag her to congratulate Team Delta Force Zero on taking another person down from the Most Wanted List, or Melissa, who would thrust food and beverage into her hand and watch her like a hawk as she devoured it, or Tina, come to give her an update or any new information to add to her board. Despite this undeniable fact that it could have been any of these people, Lucy Preston knew exactly who it was. Perhaps it was the special circumstances. Her friends knew that disturbing her in in situation was a bad idea, especially since Christopher had provisionally expelled her from OCODTF 2 or the Office of Communications and Oversight for Deployed Teams and Forces room 2. Team Delta Force Zero's operation had filled OCODTF 1 up to almost full capacity.

Lucy doesn't turn from where she is slumped in her comfy office chair to face her visitor. She already knows what they had come to tell her. "The mission was a failure. He got away." Lucy announces with a sigh.

"Well, to be more accurate, the Strike Force never laid eyes on him. As always, he's ten steps ahead," Agent Christopher corrects, still clicking the rest of the way to Lucy's desk.

"Maybe if I had been in there— "

"Nothing would have changed," Christopher insists, cutting her off. "having you inside the room watching and on comms wouldn't have made a difference."

"It might have," Lucy says, frustrated. She spins her chair around to face Christopher standing there with her button-up shirt, business jacket, pencil skirt, and heels. "I never should have told you," Lucy bites out.

"Actually, you should have told me sooner. It was the right call, Lucy. Just like me locking the OCODTF 2 doors on you was the right call. Your safety is priority." Christopher shoots right back.

"Did they at least get anything?" Lucy asks. Christopher shakes her head. "Damn," Lucy mutters. "if he had left behind even one shred of evidence, I could have argued that he was only 5 steps ahead."

"I don't care if he's five or ten steps ahead, because I need him to zero steps ahead. That or we need to be the ones ahead of him."

"He's been at the top of the Most Wanted List for nearly a year and I don't think we're any closer to getting him. Sometimes it feels like I was closer at the beginning of the year," Lucy says, her frustration resonating in her voice.

"Well, the good thing is that I plan to change that."

"How?" Lucy asks skeptically, her eyebrows raising.

"By putting together a specialized team."

"A team? That I'm going to be a part of? To go _after_ him?" Lucy's voice has risen two octaves by the time she asks the last question.

"Yes."

"To which one?"

"All three."

"I am an analyst, that's what I do. I see the big picture and then break it down into smaller pictures. I compile information and connect the dots, I stay in down in the analyst department with my desk and my boards. The only field work I deal with, is being in the OCODTF watching."

"You'll be trained for field work, Lucy, don't worry. Like I said, your safety is priority." Christopher assures her.

"It's like you didn't hear anything I just said." Lucy scoffs in disbelief at Agent Christopher.

"It's already been approved by the director, and I'm your new Commanding Officer now. Whether you agree to be a part of this team, or want it, it's already done." Christopher was using her no-nonsense, strict voice that Lucy had seen snap many agents into action.

"Fine." Lucy concedes, knowing that there's no way out of this. All of a sudden, Lucy feels excitement rising unbidden in her stomach. Maybe this would be the key, maybe with this new taskforce, they would finally catch him. "Who else is going to be on the team?"

"Agent Logan— "

"Wit, the Agent Logan that's upstairs celebrating his success with Team Delta Force Zero?" Lucy asks incredulously. Everyone had heard of Agent Logan. Aside from being on Team Delta Force Zero, who had the most success rate in taking names down from the Most Wanted List, his name was a popular one from went he went off the rails due to his wife's death four years ago. Jessica Logan's death broke him, turned him into a shell. He spent all his time at work trying to find her killer and failing to channel his anger while he spent all his free time getting drunk until he passed out. The Director agreed to take on Jessica's case for Wyatt, with the caveat that Wyatt agreed to stay out of it. He agreed, then immediately went back on his word. For a while, Jessica had her own board down here. Lucy remembers wishing she could join in to help a fellow agent, but being told that her work was too important. The situation got progressively worse every day until the Director himself told Wyatt that if he came to work, he would either not be allowed to enter the building in the first place, or he would be escorted out by other field agents. After that, Wyatt was absent from the FBI for a while. Then came the news that the case went cold. About a month after the announcement that the case was dropped, Wyatt made a reappearance. He was back; back as an agent, back on his team. But he was never the same. He had become more closed off and snappy, not that she knew him personally, it was just what she heard. But she knew he liked being a field agent and working with other field agents. Him working with her? No way. "The Wyatt Logan that will not like working with an analyst that has zero field experience?"

"Yes, that Wyatt. He's not as bad as the office rumors make him out to seem. He has a bit of a rough exterior, but trust me and give him a chance. I wouldn't be putting him on this team unless I had complete confidence in him."

"Confidence in ability and confidence in character are two different things." Lucy states. Wyatt could do his job well, but he could also be a jerk to work with. Christopher simply levels her with a stare. "Okay, okay. Who else is on the team?"

"Rufus Carlin will be the tech that enters the field with you while Jiya Marri will be tech support from within. Connor Mason will be a consultant. He'll be back in forth between our team and running the science and tech division. If we need a medical examiner, I have one lined up." Rufus Carlin? Jiya Marri? _Connor Mason?_ Rufus was well known as the protégé of Connor Mason, hand-picked and placed on a gleaming pedestal. Lucy was aware of the bitter tone some people took on when talking about him, but as Lucy understood it, Rufus lived in poverty before Mason found him. She'd heard that Rufus worked twice as hard as anybody in the science and tech division just to prove that he belonged there.

Lucy could understand where he was coming from. Her own mother was a world-class agent from the CIA. Carol Preston was a legend and that was precisely why Lucy had chosen FBI instead of CIA. Some shadows were simply too large to even attempt to live in or crawl out from underneath.

Personally, Lucy knew that the slightly pretentious, acclaimed genius that headed the science and tech division fancied himself as a philanthropist. Rufus was not his first protégé or the first person from the science and tech division that he had handpicked and plucked from 'bad living situations'. Taking that into account, she figured that people would be accustomed to people like Rufus in their division. Guess not. Sometimes envy is its own force of nature.

Lastly was Jiya Marri. She didn't know much about the girl other than she was a nerdy, well-liked tech. Well, she didn't know much besides the knowledge she gained from endlessly giggling and gossiping tech and science agents. Apparently, one Rufus Carlin had a crush on Jiya the size of the Titanic and the iceberg it crashed into combined.

Fantastic. The entire team assembled boiled down to a solider, a traveling teach, a stay-at-home-tech, a snobby philanthropist, and her, the failed analyst that the FBI, and virtually everyone, is counting on without even knowing that she is a failure. "I don't have the best feeling about this team," Lucy admits softly.

"I do." Agent Christopher relies confidently. "I'd start packing up your things to take into your new 'headquarters' tomorrow," Christopher calls over her shoulder as she _click, click, clicks_ her way back down the hallway.

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 **This was only the brief little intro, my chapters will be longer than this. Please tell me what you think and leave a review. Thank you to everyone who read, you guys are amazing.**


	2. The Team Assembles

**Sorry it took me so long to update, guys, but my life is crazy. Even in the summer. I also have a bunch of summer work that I haven't even started yet... But anyway, I worked hard to get this new chapter here. Thank you so much to everyone who read the first little chapter, and everyone who favorited and followed, you are amazing. I hope you like this new chapter. I switched up the point of views and I think it turned out well but I wanted to know what you guys think. Sorry if there are any mistakes, I finished this at like 2:00 a.m. and I don't have a beta. I also don't own Timeless. So please read, enjoy, and leave a review.**

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"No. I work in the field with _other field agents._ I don't do unexperienced analysts and techs," Wyatt says forcefully.

"Well, you do now." Christopher says.

"They have zero field experience! They are going to get themselves killed!"

"No, they'll be with you."

"I am one person, I can't be protecting them at all times."

"They will receive field training."

"Field training?" Wyatt cannot believe his ears. "You think that they will be ready to chase Garcia Flynn with what? Two weeks of field training?"

"This discussion is over, Agent Logan." Christopher says. "Time to meet the other members of your new team."

"We need to talk about this before we're attending the funerals of one of the top analysts and techs of the FBI." Wyatt insists.

"We will _not_ be attending their funerals, Wyatt" Christopher's hand comes down on her polished wood desk, uncharacteristically calling Wyatt by his first name.

"There's always a chance of attending an agent's funeral, ma'am. Part of the job." Wyatt reminds Christopher. Christopher's jaw clenches.

"If we do, it won't be because they are unprepared to go out into the field. We will discuss this in greater detail later. Go down and meet your teammates." Christopher says, gesturing toward the door.

"I thought you were coming."

"I will be there in about 10 minutes, now shoo, Agent Logan." And with that, Agent Christopher slides behind her mahogany desk. Wyatt stalks to the door and throws it open. He looks down from the landing at the spread of the first floor. Groups of cubicles, desks, filing cabinets, and projectors for various teams and jobs. Wyatt sees the cluster of his previous team, Team Delta Force Zero, nearly dead center. Yesterday they had been celebrating the takedown of number 6 from the Most Wanted List. Today, it looked as if they had gotten their new assignment and were digging right in. The senior field agent had no doubt that the team would deploy and have another successful takedown in no time. Without him.

Instead, Wyatt was going to be stuck with a group of rookies. At least in his mind. Trying to turn an analyst and a tech who spent their entire careers behind desks into field agents that could take down the #1 name from the most wanted list? It sounded like they were hoping for a miracle. Well, Wyatt would be happy to inform them that miracles don't happen.

With a heavy sigh, Wyatt trots down the stairs and makes a sharp left toward the space that would serve as the team's 'headquarters'. The place used to be an old records room. The filing cabinets had recently been cleared out and carried down to the archives as a more secure location. Wyatt was informed that the room had been soundproofed to ensure that no curious ears would hear random snippets of information regarding their case. Christopher and the Director obviously wanted to keep wraps on the Flynn case, which made sense because it was highly sensitive. But just yesterday, a strike team was sent out to one of the possible places Flynn could be. He was also aware that many techs, medical examiners, forensic scientists, and others were taken onto the Flynn case at times of need for differing periods of time. Now, it felt as if the Director were trying to lock away the secret of Garcia Flynn, which was impossible by now.

Wyatt shakes his head to dispel his thoughts, Christopher will give him the information he needs later, no use mulling over it. Wyatt's feet hit the last few steps, hoping that he will be forgiven for being a little late to meet his new team.

The only problem with the room that Christopher renovated for their little team is, it is right around the corner at the bottom of the stairs. The second you turn the corner, there's the door. The second Wyatt turns the corner there is a person. He doesn't even get time to register what they look like before they are tumbling to the floor. The other person is smaller, but they had been hurrying, their feet moving frantically when they crashed into him. Wyatt's back hits the carpeted floor as the person who ran into him falls on top of him. Wyatt guesses that it's a woman by the high-pitched squeal he hears as the person falls, and he knows it's a woman when they land on top of him and he feels curves against him. Her head, full of dark hair, lands on his collarbone and her hands crash to his chest. "Ow." The woman groans once both of them have hit the ground. "Are… are you okay?" the woman asks as she starts lifting her head.

"I might be better once you get off of me, ma'am." Wyatt says.

"Of… of course." The woman scrambles to stand up, her hands grappling for purchase on Wyatt's chest to push herself up. Once she's up, she brushes her wavy brown hair behind her shoulders and offers Wyatt a hand before a spark of recognition lights up her dark brown eyes. Wyatt's spark ignites at the same time as he places the woman in front of him: Lucy Preston, the analyst.

"I'm good, ma'am." Wyatt says as he waves off her helping hand and pushes himself to his feet.

Lucy huffs as he dismisses her offer to help and crosses her arms. "You know we're pretty much the same age, so you can just stop calling me ma'am." Lucy says with an irritated tone, her head tilted slightly up to look at him. Unbidden, the side of Wyatt's mouth pulls up as he looks down at Lucy. Lucy looks unsure of what to make of his smirk as her brows crinkle just the tiniest bit.

"What were you doing running away from the room we're supposed to be meeting in?" Wyatt asks.

"Oh, I was going to get you, actually." Wyatt raises his eyebrows. "Turns out that Mr. Mason is not the most patient man, or just likes punctuality, I'm not really sure," Lucy explains, sounding a bit nervous.

"Good thing you ran into me, then," Wyatt says, smirking as she opens her mouth. He doesn't give her a chance to speak before he gestures back the way she came. "Shall we?"

Wyatt watches as Lucy's teeth snap together and her jaw clenches. She turns on her heels and stalks back toward the door. _We'll get along great,_ Wyatt thinks sarcastically as he follows her. When she gets to the door, she stays to hold it open for Wyatt. For some reason, Wyatt cannot resist doing something that he knows will irk the analyst. He places his hand above hers on the door and gestures for her to enter. "After you, ma'am." Wyatt watches with a smirk as Lucy rolls her eyes before entering the room. Wyatt walks in after her and lets the door close behind him.

Okay, all he knew was that they were clearing out the filing cabinets, but no one told him that they were putting an addition on. As an FBI agent, how did he miss the construction? The soundproof walls, the sudden hush on this new team. Agent Christopher must have had them come in after hours or on days off to put the addition on. It would have been easy to miss, no one has come into the room since the files were moved. Well, except for Christopher's new team coming in to situate themselves. Lucy's desk was easily identifiable due to the corkboards next to it filled with pictures of Garcia Flynn, evidence, locations, and all they had on the criminal. Multicolored lines stood out over the whole thing, connecting pieces in an attempt the make the puzzle clearer. Two other desks had computers and other unidentifiable tech stuff littering the surface area, but he couldn't determine which belonged to which tech. One had a _Star Wars_ coffee mug on proud display while the one next to it boasted a _Star Trek_ coffee mug.

Then it came to the actual people in the room. He had heard of every one of them, but now they were face to face. He already met Lucy, and ticked her off more than once. In his opinion, she looked like she was dressed as some sort of professor or teacher. The other woman in the room, Jiya, has her dark hair down and clipped back over one ear. She wears a pencil skirt and a blazer that covers the majority of her—was that a _League of Draven_ T-shirt? Wyatt guesses that everyone has their own brand of professionalism. Rufus, one of the African American men in the room, dresses more like Wyatt would expect. White, button-down shirt tucked into slacks. Connor Mason himself was decked out in a full suit with the overhead lights shining down on his bald head. "Wyatt Logan, I presume?" Connor Mason says in a prim British accent.

"Yes, sir." Wyatt confirms, putting his hands behind his back.

"Connor Mason, I'll be a consultant on this team, going back and forth between here and my division." Wyatt nods, having already heard that information from Christopher.

"Hi, I'm Jiya, Jiya Marri," Jiya steps forward, extending her hand. Wyatt unclasps his hands to give hers a firm shake. "I'll be working from our home base, handling the tech aspect from his side." Jiya steps back when she's finished as Rufus Carlin steps forward.

"Rufus Carlin, I'll be handling the tech in the field," he says as he shakes Wyatt's hand. A fine sheen of sweat coats Rufus's forehead, giving away how nervous he is.

"Lucy Preston," Lucy says next to Wyatt's surprise. He hadn't expected her to introduce herself since they already met, albeit unprofessionally and unofficially. "Analyst and expert on Garcia Flynn." Lucy hangs back, not offering her hand to shake.

"Fantastic," a voice sounds from behind Wyatt and he turns to see Christopher closing the door. "Now that we are all acquainted, allow me to explain a few things about this team. First, Garcia Flynn is number one on our most wanted list and he has been there for far too long. I talked to the director about making an exclusive team to track him and the director agreed. Lucy Preston is the absolute authority on Garcia Flynn, she knows him better than anyone else, so you listen to her about Flynn with no arguments. Is that clear?" Christopher looks at each member of the team, watching them nod before continuing. "Wyatt Logan is the only member of this team besides me with field experience. He will be training Agents Preston and Carlin for the field. In the field, his priority is to protect Agent Preston and Carlin along with bringing Garcia Flynn in. Rufus Carlin and Jiya Marri are two of the hardest working members of Connor Mason's tech division. They will handle technology in and out of the field. Connor Mason will be consulting, moving between the team's headquarters and the tech division. My role, is to oversee you all, make sure you are properly trained, fulfill your roles, and bring in Garcia Flynn. From now on, anything involving Garcia Flynn does not leave this room nor this team, is that understood?" Christopher looks each agent in the eye, ensuring their understanding. "Good. Tomorrow morning Agents Logan, Preston, and Carlin will report to the shooting range for their first round of training. Now, Agent Preston, find us a location on Flynn or somewhere we can hit to get the information. Agents Carlin and Marri, work with Mason on isolating a network for the team. Agent Logan, look over the files for Agents Preston and Carlin to determine how to best prepare them for the field. Dismissed." Christopher announced. Then, she turned on one three-inch black heel and left the team's headquarters. For a second, the entire team stood there looking stunned. Except for Connor Mason who sprang into action.

"Well, don't just stand there, Rufus and Jiya, you're with me," The British man waves the two techs over to the technology laden desks to work. Rufus and Jiya slide into their seats and boot up their computers as Mason pulls a chair up behind them. Lucy goes over to her corkboards, lifting a box from under her desk and placing it on top. He watches as she extracts pictures and information, most likely from yesterday's operation. Wyatt walks toward the desk next to hers, the desk that can only be his. He doesn't keep personal belongings on his desk, the only personal touch is the well-worn, well-folded picture of Jess in his desk drawer. The rest are simply office necessities. He sighs as he sits down in his desk and opens Agent Preston's file. He views physical tests, marksman ship, health records, reflexives, etc.

The rest of the day passes in a blur as each member works on their respective tasks. By the time the numbers and words start blurring in front of Wyatt's eyes, it's past 7:30. He looks up to see Rufus and Jiya shutting down their computers and Mason rubbing his eyes. They all worked overtime. Wyatt glances over to Lucy to see her still hard at work. Right now, she stands in front of the board, arms crossed as she evaluates all the pieces. He watches her bend over her desk to scribble something on an index card before she straightens and tacks it up. Wyatt puts the file back together in a next pile before leaving them on his desk. He rounds his desk, but Lucy doesn't take any notice, too absorbed in her work. Wyatt glances at her computer, seeing a document with a list of locations. The opening of the door splits the silence and Wyatt looks up to see Jiya, Rufus, and Mason exiting the headquarters. They wave on their way out and Wyatt returns it.

Wyatt turns his attention back to the brunette who didn't even notice her co-workers leaving. Did this happen when she was down with the other analysists? Did she even know what time it was? Would she leave if he didn't remind her? Deciding he couldn't just leave her there, Wyatt walks up to her and taps her on the shoulder. Lucy shoots into the air, whirling around with wide eyes. "Wyatt," she gasps, her hand over her heart. "Sorry, I just get so caught up in my work, what is it?" she asks.

"It's 7:40, I figured you might—"

"7:40?" Lucy repeats, panicked. "Oh no, no, no. I promised Amy I wouldn't work late today." Wyatt was left stunned as the whirlwind of brown hair dashed around, throwing sheets over her corkboards to cover her work, shutting her computer down, and grabbing her coat. "Thank you, Wyatt. See… see you tomorrow!" Lucy calls as she runs out the door. Wyatt blinks. That was an interesting first day on Team Catch Garcia Flynn.

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Lucy may have been in a rush to get home, but she was not going to speed or drive recklessly, no way. Not since her accident. She was already late, she wasn't going to risk dying in a car crash to try and be less late. When she had her car parked safely in the driveway, she throws her door open and hurries inside. "Amy! I'm home." She calls out. Lucy walks to her Mom's room. Well, not her actual room, her makeshift hospital room. Carefully, Lucy extracts a jumbo Snickers bar from her purse and puts it on the table next her mom. "Hey mom." Lucy says the greeting knowing that her mom won't respond, leaning down to press a kiss to her mother's cheek. When Lucy straightens, she spies Amy sitting in a chair across from their Mom.

"Hey, you," Amy greets, a small smile on her tired face.

"Amy, I am so sorry, I lost track of time—"

"I know, Lucy. It's you. Don't worry, I had Mom to keep me company." Amy reassures her although it does nothing to lessen Lucy's guilt.

"So, has the hospital called?" Lucy asks, trying to seem causal.

"No, if they did, it would have been the first thing you heard about when you entered the house," Amy says, slightly exasperated.

"Sorry, it's just—" Lucy cuts off, looking up to blink back the sudden tears. "We need Mom to get into this clinical trial."

"I know," Amy says, getting up from her chair. She rounds the bed, one hand skimming the blanket covering their Mom as if she's connected to her. "But, Lucy, I don't think she's getting in."

"Don't… don't say that, okay? That's giving up on her."

"That is not giving up on her, but look at her," Amy demands, putting her hands on either side of her head to turn her towards their mother. "Look at her. They'll take people they think they might have a fair chance of saving. Mom, she hasn't been conscious for what? A few months? We have to accept the reality. Mom is dying of cancer and the chances of her pulling through… they're not good." Tears trickle down the faces of both sisters. Lucy had known that the chances of her mother getting into the clinical trial were incredibly slim, but she tried to block it out. She couldn't think about her Mother dying, not so soon after her father. Nowadays her life resembled an ancient portrait, stuck in the same pose and slowly but surely deteriorating.

"We… we just," Lucy stutters, struggling with finally facing the truth. Her body weight drag her down as she supports herself on her Mom's bed. The bed her Mom will probably die on. "… have to accept the facts, I guess." Lucy whispers, her voice barely audible.

"Yeah, we do." Amy agrees quietly, hunching her body over to wrap hers around her sister's. "Sometimes that's all you can do." The sisters stay enveloped in each other's arms for a few minutes, the atmosphere heavy and laden with sorrow and regret. "Alright," Amy declares and the silence shatters into a thousand pieces, the shards flying harmlessly to the ground. Lucy knows the shards of silence will pierce and cut and borrow inside her when that silence is caused by the stopping of her Mom's heart. "how about you tell me about your day with this new, exciting change of scenery? Which, by the way, that is a crap description of whatever is going on." Amy laughs as she stands up and walks into the kitchen.

"You know I can't talk about it!" Lucy laughs at her younger sister. Laughter fills the air as the sisters talk. For the rest of the night, the two Prestons create a temporary world of laughter, smiles, and sisterly love, a world devoid of dead fathers, terminally ill mothers, and the evasive ghost of Garcia Flynn.

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Rufus walks into the shooting range early in the morning, holding his federal issued gun. He looks around looking for Wyatt to find the shooting range…empty. No people, no gunshots, no flying bullets. Only targets, guns, Wyatt, and… is that Jiya?

Rufus's breath stutters out of him in an uneasy rhythm when he spots her. Her dark hair is pulled into a ponytail today, away from her face. Jiya rarely ever put her hair up, preferring to keep it down. With the exception of the occasional braid, but that still draped itself over her neck. Rufus liked the new look, liked getting a clearer look at her face, liked seeing more of her olive skin. Today, she wears a _Star Trek_ T-shirt tuck into slacks and it makes Rufus smile. No one ever came up to Jiya and asked her to dress more professionally. It was just so completely Jiya and so endearing. At least, it was to him. When she turns to face Wyatt, Rufus spots old converse beneath the slacks and his smile widens.

Rufus begins to walk toward the pair when the important questions bowl into him. What is Jiya doing here? With a gun? Christopher said Lucy and he were being trained for fieldwork, not Jiya. His steps falter for a second before Jiya turns around and gives Rufus a small wave and smile. Rufus makes it over to the two near the far end of the shooting range. "Hey, guys. What's with the emptiness?" Rufus asks. The question that really gnaws at him is Jiya's presence, but he chickened out of asking. Just like with everything else when it came to her.

"This one is closed off to everyone but our team until training's over. Christopher and the Director are really keeping the team under wraps," Wyatt says, peering over Rufus's shoulder, most likely looking for the last member of their team.

"Oh," Rufus says, shifting uncomfortably as he silently urges himself to buck up and ask about Jiya. _Come on, Barrack Obama was just president,_ Rufus thinks, _this isn't the Dark Ages of discrimination where black people faced far worse for less than asking about a girl they liked._ Rufus clears his throat. "What are you doing here, Jiya?"

"Me? Apparently Christopher and the Director spoke and decided to stick me with field training as well. They say it's just in case two people with our expertise are needed in the field," Jiya speaks easily, showing none of Rufus's shaky nervousness.

Right at the end of Jiya's statement, the heavy door opens and Lucy enters. Her wavy hair is gathered at the base of her neck in a bun, prompting Rufus to think, _is it a requirement for females to wear their hair up in the gun range?_

"Last one here?" Wyatt asks Lucy, looking like he is examining the gun in front of him when Rufus can see his shockingly blue eyes looking up for a reaction.

He gets one as Lucy throws back, "Yet still on time." Rufus saw their exchange yesterday; Lucy holding the door open, Wyatt taking her place, saying something to her that had her rolling her eyes and striding into the room in front of him. Wyatt's remaining smirk gave Rufus the impression that these two were going to have fun needling each other.

Looking at them, hearing the rumors about them, they seemed like polar opposites.

If Wyatt was the North Pole than Lucy was the South Pole.

If Wyatt was night than Lucy was day.

But they also seemed intertwined. Like the red and white on a candy cane. Two separate colors twisting around the same peppermint treat. Somehow, their differences didn't place them on opposite ends of the Earth, but on the same candy stick (And wow, was that really the metaphor he was using?).

Tension between the two was palpable the second they were in the same room together. Fun. At least that meant they wouldn't start putting holes in each other. He hoped.

"Alright, let's begin," Wyatt announces. "This is your first day of field training. We are starting with basic marksmanship and handling your gun. Anytime you go into the field, your gun will be with you. Every second you're in the field, your gun should be with you. If it's not, that's a problem." Wyatt says. _No kidding,_ Rufus thinks. He's having a hard enough time envisioning himself holding a gun outside of this room. Shooting at paper was one thing, people was another. "Does everyone remember the basics of a gun? How to use it?" Wyatt asks.

Rufus and Jiya give simple nods while Lucy pipes up. "We take a Marksmanship Test twice a year and are required to be in the shooting range practicing at least once a month," Lucy states, clearly unimpressed with Wyatt's question. The monthly shooting-at-imaginary-people-and-almost-going-deaf-from-the-sound-of-gunshots-even-with-mufflers-on was the least favorite part of Rufus's month. But every agent had to be prepared in the event that terrorists or something of the like broke into the building.

Wyatt shrugs at Lucy. "Just want to be sure, ma'am."

Lucy's shoulders tense and she stalks past Wyatt for mufflers. She clasps them over her ears and stands behind the counter. She pushes the safety off and lifts the gun, using both hands. The bullets ring out and hit their intended target. None hit the bullseye, but two litter the ring around it. All her shots hit the target. "Not bad." Wyatt comments, examining the target. Wyatt walks up to Lucy and grabs her hand. He places two fingers on her wrist, feeling her pulse. "Your heart's racing," he tells Lucy. "you want to try and control your heart rate, it'll make your shots more accurate." Wyatt drops her hand, while Lucy looks slightly stunned from having Wyatt so close to her. "Rufus, you're up." Wyatt says as he waves him over. _Oh boy._

* * *

"They did not leave anything behind, Agent Preston, so no, I will not be sending you on a wild goose chase." Christopher says, sitting at her desk with Lucy across from her.

"Maybe the Strike Team missed something."

"They scoured the building, nothing was there."

"There could be. They might not have known the right places to look. I know Garcia Flynn better than anyone, if anyone can find anything that was left behind, it's me," Lucy pauses before continuing. "Look, I know why you haven't let me on a site where Flynn has been since… since I told you, but I need to go to this one. I need anything and everything I can get. _Please,_ Christopher. You want to catch him just as badly as I do, maybe more. Aren't you willing to let me search one empty building if it could lead to his location and capture?" Lucy pleads and unspoken words weigh down the air between them. Both women know what Flynn could have left at the site, but neither verbalize it.

"Fine," Christopher concedes. "I'll come down and have Agent Marri set up the comms. You, Carlin, and Logan are going together, fully armed." Christopher stands.

"What?" Lucy asks, shocked. She stares up at Christopher from where she stays sitting down. "No… I mean… I should go alone."

"Out the question, Agent Preston. Agents Carlin and Logan go with you or you don't go at all."

* * *

"Are you trying to get them killed?" Wyatt exclaims, bursting into Christopher's office without knocking.

"Mind your tone Agent Logan, I am your commanding officer." Christopher says calmly, her pen scribbling over some paper that Wyatt couldn't care less about right now.

"We have had one morning of field training. One morning and all we did was marksmanship. They are not ready for a field mission." Wyatt argues.

"It's intel gathering, searching the place for anything Flynn left behind. Agent Preston's done it before, you'll be fine." Christopher counters.

"If it's only intel gathering, then why are we bringing guns, using comms?"

"To be safe. Surveillance left by the Strike Team shows that the building is still vacant, satellite imagining backs it up." Christopher assures him, her pen still moving, driving Wyatt wild. He wants to stomp up to her, take the pen, break it half, and make Christopher see sense. He doesn't even care if his hands get stained with ink.

"Flynn," Wyatt grits out forcefully, "is a psychopath. He is unpredictable. We have no idea that he won't burst in there guns blazing if he remembers he left something behind."

"He won't. Lucy knows Flynn and she wouldn't have asked to go back if she thought Flynn would come back."

"Compiling information about Flynn doesn't mean she _knows_ him."

"Agent Logan," Christopher says sternly, looking up at him, that infernal pen stopping in its tracks. "that is an analyst's _job._ To know who they are analyzing," Christopher's eyes soften a fraction. "I know you're worried about them, but they'll be fine. They might not be fully trained for the field, but they are clever, absolutely brilliant at what they do. If by some cataclysmic event, something does happen, they'll think of a way out of it. They'll be able to think of solutions you and I wouldn't think of given ten years. There is more to being in the field than just muscle memory. Now go on downstairs and prepare to leave." Christopher dismisses him, her pen picking up where it left off.

Wyatt stalks away, leaving not completely satisfied. He stomps all the way downstairs and into the Team's headquarters. He observes the scene in front of him.

Rufus is strapped into a bulletproof vest, Jiya by his side as she adjusts the comm in his ear. Mason is on his other side, looking like he's either comforting or calming down the younger man. Probably the second.

Lucy stands by her desk, her bulletproof vest on without all the buckles snapped and pulled tight. He watches her contort the side of her body as she struggles to snap a buckle into place.

A smirk pulls at the side of his mouth and he's striding across the floor before he even tells his feet to move. "Let me help." Wyatt says, startling Lucy as she jumps in surprise. Wyatt snaps the remaining buckles into place and pulls them as tight as he can. "There." Wyatt declares, looking up from his task. Lucy's dark brown eyes stop him in his tracks. They're wells, deep and endless and beautiful. Emotion swirls in them, part surprise and something else he can't quite identify. The moment stretches on and on as her eyes search his although he has no idea what she is looking for.

A throat clearing startles Wyatt and he steps back blinking. Jiya stands behind him, her shirt looking strangely out of place. Her brown eyes flick between Wyatt and Lucy and her hand lifts to display a comm. "I need to put this in Lucy's ear," she says.

"Of course." Wyatt steps back and moves over to his desk to sling his bulletproof vest over his dress shirt and when he looks back, Lucy's eyes are still on him.

* * *

"You're joking, right?" Rufus demands, his head bent close to Mason's.

"Do I look like I'm in a joking?" Connor Mason asks irritably.

"No." Rufus refuses.

"Rufus, you will do this. You don't understand these people, how deep I'm in with them or what they'll do to you if you don't do what they want," Connor's voice trembles slightly and Rufus's stomach rolls. He remembers being younger, the days when he was poor.

A dirty, small house and a half-full stomach. Then Connor Mason swooped in like a white knight, offering Rufus everything. He sent him to the academy, provided for his brother and mom, cared for him like a son. Even now, Rufus couldn't imagine what would make Connor this afraid, this desperate.

"Even if I wanted to," Rufus reasons, "I couldn't. Jiya would pick up the frequency of the recorder."

"It operates on a special frequency I created. Don't worry about that, I'll handle things here as long as you take the device and record them."

"They're my team, Connor, and you're asking me to betray them on our first mission together," Rufus knows Connor's afraid, but how can he betray these people? Jiya? Lucy, who just wants to do the right thing? Wyatt, who looks like he's about to go off to war as he preps his gun? Christopher, who believes in this team, in him.

"I am, because if you don't, we are not the only people they'll hurt. They target those close to you; your mother, Kevin, Jiya. And don't think they're above hurting the people on this team," Mason holds out the device, so little yet capable of such damage. A feeling boils up inside him. A feeling that one day this little device is going to create shockwaves, in his team, in his life, in everything he knows or thought he knew. He doesn't see another answer. Not yet. He takes the device.

* * *

"What are we looking for anyway?" Wyatt asks, his gun drawn.

"Anything connected to Flynn, and you can put that away, we won't be needing it." Lucy answers. He'd had his gun drawn since they entered the big warehouse. She figured he considered himself the protector of the team, especially with her and Rufus's lack of training, but the gun being out was too much. The image in the corner of her eye made her whip her head around and look over her shoulder like danger was just around the corner.

Wyatt makes a noise deep in his throat, but he holsters the gun. Lucy's muscles relaxed, her shoulders rolling back. _Where, where, where,_ the question bounces around the inside of her skull.

He wouldn't make it easy, not somewhere someone else could find it. He would make her work for it. She was loathe to admit it, but she enjoyed it a bit. It wasn't easy, it was challenging, it made her brain work. Her enjoyment of the task and the chase spiked her frustration. This is probably what Christopher is afraid of.

Lucy sighs heavily. "Look everywhere. Call me if you find something," she throws at her two teammates, almost absentmindedly as she surveys the scene. The warehouse is a simple, single-story building. It has an L-shape, one hallway going left as the other ends. Empty, no tables, nothing on the walls, no shelves, no storage containers, nothing.

Lucy starts down the warehouse, turning the corner to the second hallway. As she walks, she reaches up to shut off her comm. She knows Christopher will give her hell for it later. Unsafe is what she'll say. But if she finds what she thinks she will, the team can't know.

Lucy keeps walking down the hallway when she hears the creaking beneath her. Hardwood! Warehouse floors are typically concrete or linoleum. Lucy crouches down, examining the floor. It's new. Hardly well-worn which it should have been if warehouse worked trekked on it all day long. His piece of hardwood creaked, but did the others? Lucy stands and walks away, down and back. Only that piece. Crouching down again, Lucy works at prying the creaking piece up.

Lucy tries to jam her nails underneath, using them as leverage. It doesn't work and all she receives is a broken nail on her left hand. Some small part of her thought once she found it, getting it up would be easy. If Flynn put something underneath, the piece should be loose. But then again, it's Flynn. Lucy scrabbles with the piece of hardwood, her finger slicing open at the effort as red blood blooms and smears over the floor. Lucy grunts, ignoring the pain in her fingers, as she keeps trying. Again, and again, and again. Then the tell. The piece gives slightly. Excitement buzzes in her head. She found it! With renewed purpose, she grips the piece, pulling with all her might in her eagerness to get to the puzzle piece underneath. Finally the piece comes up.

Lucy discards the piece of hardwood to the side carelessly. She peers into the narrow hole, letting the fluorescent lights from overhead flood the space.

And there is it.

A manila folder.

And a message on top. A scrap of paper with pen written on it, his handwriting familiar to her now.

 _Better luck next time._

* * *

To say Denise Christopher would be irritated would be an understatement.

 _Rittenhouse._

Of course the blasted folder Flynn left would have Rittenhouse junk in it. She shouldn't have expected anything more. Wishful thinking, that was what it was. But Flynn had been in the game too long, he didn't slip up, not with this. But she knew he would slip up eventually. When he did, Denise had confidence that Lucy would catch it and then they would catch him.

Denise was at least glad that Lucy was able to keep the name Rittenhouse from the rest of her teammates. She had stuck the folder under her bulletproof vest, keeping it clamped between her body and the vest. She told Wyatt and Rufus that the cuts on her fingers were from trying to pry up what she thought was a loose floorboard, that she thought Flynn may have accidently left something behind there. She told them that she didn't find anything and her efforts were futile.

As soon as Lucy got back to headquarters, she zipped up the stairs and to her office. That was when Denise got the news.

 _Rittenhouse._

She hated that name.

Lucy would put whatever information Flynn gave her on her Rittenhouse corkboard, the one that Denise kept hidden away in the 'closet' in her office. No one could see the board except herself and Lucy, not since their first mention of Rittenhouse. Not since they learned what Rittenhouse really was.

Not since they knew that Rittenhouse was as dangerous as Garcia Flynn, maybe more.

Denise Christopher was no fool. You don't have a network as big as Flynn and Rittenhouse did without having sources in high places. There was no doubt in her mind that this very building had moles that leaked information to Rittenhouse or Flynn.

Rooting out the moles, though, that was the real problem. Lucy's new team would not hear the name Rittenhouse until Christopher was 100 percent certain that none of them were moles.

Nowadays, anyone could be anything, willing or not. But Christopher would find out who they were, willing or not.

* * *

Exhaustion.

Sweeping through her body, settling in her bones, inhaling it like oxygen.

More Rittenhouse. That was all the folder was, that blasted organization that Flynn thought he could get her to tear down. Rittenhouse was only useful to her if she gleaned any information about Flynn from them. He was too careful for that, though.

Tomorrow, she would be in bright and early, earlier than she needed to be for training, so that she could go up into Christopher's office, lock herself in the 'closet', and give herself a headache going through the file Flynn left.

With the daunting thought of the morning to come, Lucy actually left work on time. Sleep was a much needed commodity if she was going to get through tomorrow morning and make progress.

Lucy pulls into the driveway, her lids drooping at the welcoming thought of her fluffy mattress, soft pillow, and thick, fuzzy blanket. She trudges up the walk to the house and pushes the door open. "Amy," she calls through the house, her voice giving away her tiredness. "I'm home."

No response.

Lucy pauses, her hand on the banister and her gut tugging her up toward her bed. But a bigger part of her tugs her back downstairs to look for Amy. She always replies. Always.

Lucy finds herself wide awake as she steps into the kitchen, her eyes snapping open she quickly that the light burns.

The sight in front of her burns worse.

Amy, bloody and beaten and tied to a chair. Ropes wind tightly around her wrists and Lucy sees the blood welling up underneath. A red handkerchief gags her younger sister and her head lolls to the side. Her eyes are open, almost unseeing although the left one is swollen and starting to bruise. Her shirt is ripped, large swathes of skin showing along with the long gashes and cuts slashed across her body. The most serious wound seems to be a gash on her shoulder; large and deep and dripping a steady stream of thick hot blood down Amy's arm to pool at the leg of the chair. Her jeans aren't afring much better than the shirt, neither is the skin underneath. The kitchen table in front of her is splattered with blood.

Lucy feels a scream building in her throat.

A shadow steps into the only light in the room, the light cast by the small chandelier above the kitchen table. Above Amy. The scream dies in Lucy's throat.

Someone's here. The person who did this to Amy is still here. Lucy needs to be smart, to remain rational. But she can't stop the dread from filling up her body. Nor the tears from spilling over.

"Lucy Preston," the voice rasps. "I've been waiting for you." It's a man, a stranger with scars crisscrossing his face, but that is all Lucy can get from a glance. She's afraid to look away from Amy. The world narrows down to her little sister, her dying little sister.

Air rushes back to her lungs and she speaks, crying out frantically. "Amy, Amy! Amy, look at me! Amy!"

"She'll be fine…" the voice responds. " _if_ you answer my questions. If you answer my questions, I'll leave and you can get her to a hospital."

"Amy!" Lucy shouts.

Suddenly, a flash of silver cuts through the air. A knife, a very, very large, sharp knife sticks right out of Amy's hand. Lucy screams. Amy jerks in her seat and her eyes flit around hazily, the first sign of life. "I suggest that you start paying attention to me and not your sister, her life is in my hands." The voice growls.

"Amy!" Lucy's breathing hard, ducking her head to try and catch Amy's eye. "It's going to be all right, it's going to be fine."

A pale hand on the knife twists it in Amy's hand. Lucy sobs and watches the ripping flesh with horror and growing hysteria. Her knees shake and knock together and she idly thinks that it's a wonder she hadn't collapsed yet. Then she realizes she did. She collapsed into the kitchen chair with the blood-splattered table and Amy directly across from her. "It's not going to be all right," the man barks out, twisting and twisting and twisting the knife.

Lucy's drowning in a monsoon of tears, Amy barely visible anymore. "Please," she begs, her eyes flicking up to the scarred man. "Please, don't hurt her, I'll—I'll tell you anything you want"

"Garcia Flynn!"

"What?" Lucy asks, her mind a disastrous maelstrom. That name was so far from her mind that she's shocked when it falls from the lips of the stranger in front of her.

"What do you know about him?" the stranger demands.

Lucy swallows, trying to arrange her thoughts in a coherent order as she stares at Amy. Poor, little, bleeding Amy. "He—He used to be an NSA agent. Deceased wife and daughter—"

"Yes, yes, I know that. What else? The things other wouldn't know."

"I don't—don't know what you're talking about, please." Lucy sobs.

"What about Rittenhouse. What does he know about Rittenhouse?" The voices is screaming now, but nothing is loud enough to drown out the screams in Lucy's head.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" Lucy cries, her eyes forever fixed on the life seeping out of her sister.

Flash. The silver of the knife flashes as the man yanks it out of Amy's hand. Blood spurts up from the hole in her hand, flowing fast, too fast. The man sticks the knife in the table in front of Lucy, the blade still slick with Amy's blood. He leans over the table, hand still gripping the handle of the knife, and he blocks Amy from Lucy's view. "Find Garcia Flynn," he growls. "Find him and put him down or your little sister, and many more, are dead." With those final words, the man left, strolling out of the kitchen like he had all the time in the world.

"Amy!" Lucy screams, as soon as the man moves away. She stands up and knocks the chair she was sitting on over. "Amy, Amy, Amy," she repeats as she picks at the knots tying Amy's ankles and wrists to the chair. Her fingers split back open and her blood mingles with Amy's on the ropes. _There's no time for this._ Without hesitation, Lucy reaches up and grabs the knife sticking out of the table. She slashes through the bonds, almost throwing up at using the knife that was used to hurt Amy, to free her. When the last rope falls away, Amy slumps forward, knocking into the table and smearing her blood on it. "Oh God, oh God, oh God." Lucy shoves the table away, catching Amy as she slumps into her arms. "Amy, Amy!" she shouts, cradling her, turning her so that her face is to the ceiling, to her.

Her eyes are closed. When did that happen? No, no, no, no. Lucy eases Amy onto her folded legs and rips off her shirt, kneeling in her kitchen in only a bra. Taking the wadded-up fabric, she presses it to Amy's hand. But her shoulder is still seeping. Lucy's breath rushes in and out, in and out in an fast tempo. Her hand reaches into her pant pocket and pulls out her phone.

Her hands tremble as she dials 911, blood streaking across the screen.

" _911, what's your emergency?"_ The voice asks. Lucy sobs desperately into the phone.

The screaming of ambulance sirens don't come soon enough.

* * *

 **What did you guys think? I hope nothing was too confusing, if you have any questions please message me. I would love if you guys left reviews, and I'll work on the next chapter. Thank you all my readers and Timeless fans, I love you!**


	3. 24 Hours

**Hey guys, I'm back! I'm not dead! I'm so sorry it has taken so long to update. I'm still in school which is my priority. But on the upside, I'm doing much better at balancing everything this school year than my previous ones. I will admit, however, that I could be writing more than I am. I think about my next chapter, but always grossly underestimate how long it will take. I, apparently, am very into introspection and writing about the inner thoughts and feelings of characters. So every chapter turns into more of a behemoth than I think it will be. But Thanksgiving break is here, so I finished this chapter as I lay on my couch progressively getting sicker day by day. I meant to have this done Thanksgiving Day as a little present to you guys, but then I put Timeless on in the background as I was writing. So then... time travel, Wyatt and Lucy's chemistry, and Rufus's quips distracted me. Because of that, it took a little longer to finish up the chapter.**

 **But it's done. I'm going to try really, really hard to get another chapter up for you guys because you deserve it. You are all awesome and amazing and I love you guys. Every little review and favorite and follow makes me smile. I just want to give a personal shout-out to TheVelvetDusk because your last review made my day. Also, Once Upon a Whim, I enjoyed your review too.**

 **I apologize for any grammar or spelling mistakes. I do not have a beta, but if anyone is interested, please contact me because I would be super thrilled to have one.**

 **I truly hope I live up to expectations and do these characters justice. I hope you enjoy, please leave a review!**

* * *

Chaos.

That was the only fitting description of the scene Wyatt saw unfolding in front of him when he shoved the hospital doors open. It seemed that he got there the same time the ambulance carrying...whoever was hurt did. A call from Agent Christopher had told Wyatt that he needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. He ignored the speed limit and ran red lights. He remembers the minute he knew the situation was far worse than he thought. When he questioned Christopher, it seemed that for the first time Christopher was not withholding information, she didn't have it. She said Lucy texted her the word emergency with the name of the hospital and that was it. The call was brief because she needed to inform the rest of the team.

The commotion draws Wyatt eyes when he pushes through the doors.

Lucy. Hair matted with blood, hands covered with blood, dried blood on her slacks, blood splattered on her face, blood everywhere. The only semi-clean garment was a zip-up hoodie that Lucy was wearing. Patches of blood on the hoodie confirm Wyatt's assumption that underneath the top layer, her shirt contains an alarming amount of blood.

For a split second, it feels as if someone has reached down into Wyatt's lungs and stolen his breath. He itches to dash over to Lucy and make sure she's okay. He knows it's irrational: Lucy's walking around and clearly fine, not to mention that he barely knows her. But knowing that he's being irrational doesn't make the need dissipate, and he still has to dig his heels into the solid ground to stop himself from bounding across the hospital to her. When Wyatt catches sight of the person on the stretcher next to her, he feels the need to run over to Lucy for an entirely different reason. This young woman on the stretcher is the source of the blood. He doesn't know her relation to Lucy yet, but his heart aches. The ache comes from deep inside, buried and caged in with Jess's grave, of knowing what it feels like losing the one person you swore you wouldn't be able to live without.

If Lucy was coated in blood, this person was nearly drowning in it. Blood streaks the girl's (he sees long hair and guesses it's a girl, but he's not sure) hair and her face is more battered and bruised than bloody but splotches show up every now and again. A large wad of gauze covers her shoulder, bloody gauze. The wound bled straight through. Another bloody piece of gauze is wrapped around the girl's hand. Her clothes are torn and splattered with blood, some places soaked. Cuts, bruises, gashes, and the like decorate the girl's body. Wyatt can tell from her appearance that the situation is _not_ good, but if he needed any more confirmation, the doctors and paramedics speaking frantically overhead as they wheel her away give him it.

Wyatt feels a blast of cold night air as the doors open behind him. A gasp. From the corner of his eye, Wyatt sees Jiya come to an abrupt halt beside him. Her hand comes up to her mouth and tears instantly spill from her eyes. She's caught sight of Lucy and the girl.

Lucy is keeping pace with them, tears still running down her face, her eyes puffy from an extended period of crying. At one point, a paramedic breaks off and holds Lucy back. Wyatt knows what they're telling her. They're saying they will do everything they can for the girl, they will try their hardest to save her, but Lucy needs to stay back and let them work. "Please, please," Lucy begs, her voice cracking. "she's my sister, please, I need to be with her." Despite her argument, Lucy willing goes with the paramedic as they tug her over to a chair in the waiting room and push her down into it. They crouch down in front of her, tell her something else, and then they are rushing the way Lucy's sister went. Wyatt watches as Lucy's head sags and she stares at her hands. He wonders if she notices the sheer amount of blood on them. Her sister's blood. He doesn't think so. If she did, she'd probably in the bathroom trying to scrub it away and down the drain.

"Lucy?" the call pierces the air of the waiting room, and Wyatt whips his head around to see Agent Christopher enter. Wyatt's gaze falls back to Lucy when he sees her stand. From where he's standing, he can clearly see the emotion in her eyes.

The sadness, the horror, the fear quickly being taken over by bubbling, boiling, glowing anger.

Then comes the explosion. Lucy's shouting at Christopher, using her blood-stained hands to wildly gesture. Christopher is walking briskly towards her, trying to contain her. Another blast of night air and Rufus is stumbling into the hospital, Mason right behind him. Christopher and Lucy's words blur together and overlap and Wyatt only catches words and sounds until he finally hears Christopher say loudly, but still not yelling, "Not here."

"Not here? Not here? I don't care where the hell we talk about this, my sister is dying and Garcia Flynn—" Lucy looks crazed.

"This a matter of national security—"

"It's personal now." Lucy declares. Both women are face to face, standing their ground. When Wyatt first met Lucy Preston, he didn't think of her as terrifying, as someone scary or intimidating at all. But now, now she looks terrifying.

A clerk from behind the desk in the waiting room scurries out from behind his post. His eyes are wide and he looks slightly at a loss for what to do. He clears his throat, "Excuse me is there a problem?" he asks even though there clearly is.

Christopher barely looks at him as her hand dives into the pocket of her long coat and she pulls out her badge. She flips it open to show the clerk. "FBI." She says. "We need a private room to discuss matters of national security."

* * *

A few minutes later, Christopher, Rufus, Lucy, Mason, Jiya, and Wyatt are all in a private room at the hospital, vacant from any patients.

"This was Flynn?" Christopher asks Lucy. Lucy is slumped against a wall, all the fight that had been boiling out of her in the waiting room simply gone.  
Her sister. Bloody, beaten, barely alive. Her sister, here in this hospital where they are trying to save her life.

"It had to be," Lucy whispers, leaning her head back against the wall, fresh tears following the dried tear tracks on her face.

"What did the person look like?" Christopher asks.

"Male, scars on this face, I think darkish hair… I don't know, my attention was elsewhere, on my sister." Lucy says, irritation leaking into her voice. Amy was tied up and bleeding to death in front of her and she thinks she got a look at the man attacking them? She tried to keep Amy in her sight, a leaden ball of fear in her stomach said that if she looked away, Amy might not still be there when she looked back.

"I understand this is difficult for you, Lucy," Christopher begins and Lucy wants to laugh but the sound gets stuck in her throat. Difficult? Difficult was chasing Garcia Flynn. Difficult was hearing that Flynn had gotten away again. Difficult was accepting the fact that her mother was dying of lung cancer. Speaking of her mother…

Lucy's train of thought is derailed when she unexpectedly hears Wyatt's voice. "She almost lost her sister, give her a damn minute." he almost snaps. Lucy's eyes flick over to him, knowing that her gratefulness shows on her face. At a time like this, it's easy for Lucy to forget that Wyatt lost someone: his wife. He knows part of what she's going through and Lucy appreciates the empathy, the understanding. As much as she and Wyatt seem to push each other's buttons, she feels the unexplainable magnetism pulling them towards each other. She thinks he's the only one in this room who can really understand her right now.

"Fine," Christopher speaks up again, and Lucy breaks eye contact with Wyatt to look at her. "We'll talk about this later…unless you want to talk about it now, Lucy?" Christopher tacks the last part on her hesitantly. Lucy knows why, with the way she was yelling at her in the waiting room.

"I just want to go back to the waiting room and wait to hear if my sister is going to pull through," Lucy says tiredly. Christopher nods and Lucy pushes off the wall toward the door of the private room. She walks back down the hallway until she gets to the room where she made a scene. She feels a bit sheepish as she looks around at the others in the room. Some of these people probably have it as though as her right now. Maybe the old man in the corner is waiting to hear about his daughter who was taken here after a car crash. Maybe the man in his late twenties has a wife who is having pregnancy complications. Lucy sits down and is surprised when Jiya plops down next to her. Rufus takes the seat on Jiya's other side and Mason sits next to him. Wyatt sits on the other side of Lucy, the one not occupied by Jiya, and Christopher sits in a row of seats in front of Lucy's, facing another direction.

"Lucy," Jiya whispers, leaning in close. Lucy turns to the woman, seeing the tear tracks on her face. Jiya shed those tears for her; for her and her sister. "do you want to come into the bathroom with me and clean the blood off your hands?" she asks gently.

Lucy looks down at her hands. Her bloody hands. Blood dried underneath her fingernails, into the ridges of her hand and fingers. Her brain throws her back to the house, holding her shirt against Amy's hand and trying to put pressure on the other major wound by using her bare hand. Lucy suddenly feels sick, like she could vomit. Lucy's eyes drift down to her jeans, catching sight of the blood not only on them, but splotched on her hoodie. "Lucy?" Jiya whispers gently, taking Lucy back to her offer. Lucy nods vigorously and Jiya takes her arm to pull her up. Lucy stumbles as she stands and Wyatt's hand lands on the outside of her thigh, ready to steady her.

"You okay?" Wyatt asks, concerned. Lucy shivers from the cold sensation of being treated like she's a piece of radioactive material or a deadly virus and the only beings that can touch her are in hazmat suits. She's nearly convinced she's losing her mind when she sees Wyatt, Jiya, Christopher, Rufus, and Mason wearing said hazmat suits. She shakes her head. She knows why they are doing it. In fact, she appreciates it because if they were treating her normally, Christopher probably would have kept pressing her for answers.

But Lucy hates feeling like this. The pit of helplessness and despair that gut her and suck everything else inside like a black hole.

Inside the analyst part of the FBI, she sits on a throne. A metaphorical one where she's the one who cracked Flynn, the one who put the puzzle together, where she is in her element and she can bring people to justice. She can handle figuring out the inner workings of Garcia Flynn. She cannot handle a doctor telling her that her sister drew her last breath.

"Lucy?" Wyatt's voice cuts through the thicket of the jungle in her brain and she looks down at him, her eyes blurring from a new onslaught of tears. Jiya sees the coming waterworks and helps Lucy toward the bathroom, Wyatt's hand falling off of her thigh.

Lucy tries to support her weight as they head to the restroom. She has a feeling in her gut that Jiya would support her weight, but she shouldn't have to. Despite the circumstances, despite everything; Lucy is a young, confident, strong, determined woman. She dealt with the loss of her father, finally accepted the inevitable demise of her mother, she can pull herself together until she gets news.

Suddenly, water is running from a sink in the waiting room bathroom. Lucy stares around herself almost in shock, she doesn't even remember entering. Jiya walks her in front of the sink, standing beside her while keeping her hand on her arm the whole time. Lucy looks up at her reflection unflinchingly. It can't be worse than what she imagines.

Blood is spattered on her face and dried in her hair. If Lucy didn't know any better, she would say she dyed the tips of her hair blood red. But she does know better. There are lines of blood and a big smear on her right cheek where she held the phone up to her ear and the blood transferred from the screen to her face. Even the tears dribbling from her dark eyes are tainted with the barest of reds. Lucy instinctively lifts her hands to brush away the tears when her hands freeze on the way to her face.

They are covered in blood too.

The rough brush of hospital paper towels momentarily shocks Lucy's system. Her hands fall to either side of the sink as she lets Jiya brush away her tears with the paper towel. "You know it's okay to cry, right? Given everything that's happened to you… it's okay." Jiya says softly, her breath lightly puffing against Lucy's pale cheek.

"No, I've cried enough for today. Besides, it didn't happen to me, it happened to my sister." Lucy whispers, so low that she's sure only God hears her. And she hopes desperately that he's listening, that he'll help Amy.

"She's family," Jiya counters. "what happens to her happens to you." She says. She tosses the paper towel in the trash and wets a new one. She starts gently stroking at the blood on Lucy's face, the cloth coming away rusty.

"She's the one that's fighting for her life." Lucy whispers, her eyes locked on her own in the mirror.

"If she's made of the same stuff you are, she'll pull through." Jiya tells her confidently while tilting Lucy's head to get at some blood behind her ear.

"She's made of stronger stuff." Lucy says, a hint of pride coloring her voice.

"I don't think that's possible." Jiya says. She throws away the stained paper towel and takes Lucy's hands in her own. Flakes of dried blood already pepper Jiya's hands, but she doesn't pull away. She guides Lucy's hands under the water. Both women watch the tinted water spiraling down, down, down, and down the drain. "You're the woman who flagged Flynn days before he made it onto the Most Wanted List. You're the woman who had worked tirelessly to catch him since. You are the woman who has known failure and setbacks and hasn't given up yet. You are the woman who has worked harder and longer in spite of those failures and setbacks. Lucy, you are remarkable. I have no doubt that your sister is too, but I don't think they get much stronger than you. Maybe it's Preston blood. She'll pull through."

Every word steals a little bit more of Lucy's breath. Is that really how Jiya sees her? She doesn't know if what she's saying is true, but every heartbeat tells her that Jiya wouldn't have said it if she didn't think it. Lucy's never really thought about all that she's done or accomplished. All her brain could seem to focus on were the failures, the setbacks, the uncontrollable variables that drove her out of her mind.

But Jiya was wrong about one thing: Amy is stronger than her. She always has been, from the very beginning. She had to pull through.

* * *

Denise Christopher hates the small, wooden waiting room chair. Everything inside her feels much too large to be contained in her, or a seat this small. She refuses to stand up though. She knows if she does, she'll have to focus on stopping herself from pacing and she simply doesn't have the energy for that.

She hears the bathroom door open and her eyes dart to see Jiya and Lucy exiting, the blood washed from the latter's hands. The small ribbon of guilt worming through her veins stretches and wriggles at the sight of Lucy.

She shouldn't have pushed her for details. Lucy was barely holding herself together, everything written clearly on her face.

That wasn't Denise.

She tried to conceal what she felt inside most of the time. That was part of being a leader: giving her subordinates confidence and guidance even if her stomach roiled and rebelled at the thought of two inexperienced agents in a firing zone. Her job was to stay calm, evaluate the situation, give orders. She did that. And in that private hospital room she wanted to call the FBI and give them a new one: find whoever did this to Amy Preston and make him suffer.

Lucy is more than just a co-worker or subordinate to Denise.

She's a friend.

She's been over to Denise's house for dinner, met her wife and children. She's also been to Lucy's house, met her sister and glimpsed her sick mother.

Denise doesn't shoulder the responsibility she feels about Lucy because she has to: she shoulders it because she wants to.

"Family of Amy Preston?" A female doctor calls out into the waiting room. Lucy is out of her seat and in front of the doctor in a second. Denise pushs herself up and walks over as well.

"I'm Lucy Preston, Amy's sister." Lucy says frantically, desperate for any news on her sister.

"Denise Christopher, FBI, this girl's status is important to the bureau and I need to hear everything you tell Miss Preston." Denise says smoothly, flipping open her badge. The nurse squints at the badge for a few seconds before nodding and looking at the papers on the clipboard in front of her.

"How—how is she?" a tremor shakes Lucy's voice.

"Not good, Miss Preston," The doctor says, shaking her head. Lucy blanches. "She's alive, but the next twenty-four hours are crucial. She lost a lot of blood, so much that she went into Hypovolemic Shock. Hypovolemic shock is also known as hemorrhagic shock, a condition caused by severe blood loss. When enough blood is lost, there is not enough blood in circulation for the heart to be an effective pump. Blood pressure can plummet, organs can start shutting down. All in all, Amy's case of Hypovolemic Shock is critical. We are trying to get blood back into her system, but her blood type is O. Universal donor, but can only receive type O blood for themselves. We're contacting the blood bank to get more type O down here immediately for your sister."

"I can donate blood," Lucy says almost frantically. "my blood type is O."

"That would be an appreciated donation, Miss. Preston, but there is only so much blood we can take from you. Your sister is going to need more blood than you can offer her. But that doesn't even cover Amy's hand. Veins and arteries were nicked, some were more than nicked. This, of course, worsened Amy's blood loss. Not to mention potentially irreparable nerve, muscle, tendon, and tissue damage. If Amy survives, she may never have full functionality of her right hand again. Her left shoulder also received significant damage. The tendon in her shoulder is torn, again the damage could be irreparable. The gash in her shoulder spanned a significant length and requires skin grafts to help us sew it back together again." The doctor explains.

"What about surgery?" Denise asks. "To try and repair the damage in her hand and shoulder?"

"Not possible in her condition." The doctor shakes her head. "We cannot afford any more blood loss by attempting surgery or risk the stem of oxygen circulating her body. Attempting surgery could lead to total organ failure and shut down, which we are not willing to risk. Surgery could be an option in the future if she pulls through and the rest of her body heals. But by then the damage could be irreversible, like how if a broken bone is not set, it will heal in the wrong place. Bones can be re-broken to set, but the same is not possible in Amy's situation. Any damage that is acquired by her body trying to heal itself, or any damage that does not heal, will be permanent. I am so sorry, Miss Preston."

Denise is surprised that Lucy is still standing after hearing all of that. If it were her hearing that about someone in her family, she might have been on the floor. Nothing is more important to her than family. She glances over at Lucy to see the anguish etched across her face and that she is using her arm braced against the wall to hold herself up.

"I'm afraid there's more," The doctor winces apologetically.

"What?" Denise asks tiredly, praying that the next words out of the doctor's mouth are at least about something minor.

No such luck.

"Amy experienced severe head trauma. Hypovolemic shock also affected the circulation of oxygen in her blood and throughout her body. Her blood pressure plummeting worsened the situation. I cannot tell you for how long, but Amy's brain wasn't getting the oxygen it needed when she came in. Her injury is called a Hypoxic Brain Injury; her brain got less oxygen than needed but it was not fully deprived. Unfortunately, the effects of lack of oxygen and complete deprivation are similar. After one minute of oxygen deprivation, brain cells start dying. Of course, Amy wasn't fully deprived of oxygen and other factors come into play such as the blood oxygenation level at the time of the injuries sustained. What I am trying to say, Miss Preston, is that your sister may have sustained brain damage. At this point, it is difficult to tell and we won't know if she has brain damage or the full extent of it until she regains consciousness. And… as far as we can tell, Amy will not be regaining consciousness anytime soon."

"What exactly do you mean by that?" Lucy's voice is strangled.

"Amy is in a coma due to severe head trauma and lack of oxygen to the brain." The doctor gives them the news sullenly.

The wall is no longer enough to support Lucy.

* * *

Wyatt's not sure what he's doing laying in his bed at home, one arm bent and hand under his head. His mind is still back in that hospital waiting room, still back with Lucy. No reason for his physical person not to be there either. He thinks back to that room, to the team and their brokenhearted analyst.

The doctor had called out for the family of Amy Preston and Lucy moved faster than Wyatt had ever seen her. He was surprised when Christopher pushed herself out of her seat and followed the brunette. Christopher was not one to show many emotions. She was the leader, the one who composed herself, held people together when they couldn't do it themselves. His blood had boiled in that private room when Christopher had been throwing questions at Lucy.

He remembered losing Jessica; the crushing sorrow and overwhelming rage. He saw it reflected in Lucy, knew she needed time to process it. He'd snapped at Christopher, feeling a twinge of sympathy when he saw emotion flash across her face. Christopher didn't show emotion well, she acted instead. That was what she had been trying to do, probably not realizing how she was affecting Lucy. Wyatt barely had any time to dwell on Christopher lapse of emotion because Lucy looked over her shoulder at him. Those devastated dark eyes. But it was the first time since Wyatt got to the hospital that he saw something other than anger or sorrow in her eyes. Those dark orbs thanked him for standing up for her. He didn't want her to look okay. He wanted to make sure she was okay. It was so foolish to think that way. Of course, she wasn't okay. But he wanted to make sure she didn't spiral like he did after Jess died. Except Lucy was smarter than him, a hundred times smarter. She'd probably be fine. At least that's what he told himself.

He'd nearly fallen back into old habits himself, reaching for a bottle of whiskey when he got home after his heavy night. Lucy's face, streaked with tears and yelling in anger stilled his hand. She was going to the team to catch whoever did this. She was going to need him. Drunk wasn't an option. He retracted his hand and headed straight to bed, trying to push down the pain in his chest without alcohol. Knowing that the ache in Lucy's chest was worse than his somehow made it better. He huffed, staring at the dark bedroom ceiling. He couldn't stop thinking about the hospital, the blood. Lucy.

He remembers raising half out of his chair as Lucy and Christopher talked to the doctor. They were over there for a while.

That was never a good sign.

Then Lucy collapsed. Wyatt darted out of his seat and ran over. Christopher had tried jumping into action awkwardly, not prepared for the situation. She caught the front of Lucy's hoodie, stumbling on the heels from work she still had on, stalling her descent to the ground. Stalling her just enough for Wyatt to get there. His arms went around Lucy and lowered her to the ground gently.

He'd never really thought of her as small or frail. She had literally knocked him over during their first encounter. She had strutted straight to the targets and filled them with bullet holes. Her face was set with fierce determination in the warehouse they searched. Even in the waiting room, she had started yelling at Christopher forcefully. She always seemed like a force. But now as Wyatt held her, it was like the winds of a hurricane had dissipated in the matter of a second.

It was utterly wrong.

Lucy was still conscious when she collapsed, but her eyes weren't focusing on anything. Her body trembled, and the onslaught of tears started again. Wyatt leaned down to her ear, attempting to whisper comforting nonsense. At the sound of his voice, Lucy turned her body into his, curling up and sobbing. Her hands fisted in his shirt. Wyatt stayed there, letting her use him as support, as a shoulder to cry into.

Later, he would register the people around him. The doctor and Christopher talking quietly and worriedly, Christopher's dark eyes darting to Lucy's form every few seconds. Jiya kneeled on the ground right next to her. Her hand was on Lucy's back, rubbing circles. Rufus was on the ground right next to Jiya. He looked a bit at a loss, not sure what to do. Eventually, he just put his hand on Lucy's shoulder, showing her that he was there. Connor stood next to Rufus and looked a bit uncomfortable with the thick atmosphere and emotion. A small seed of resentment bloomed for the man. Couldn't Connor pretend to care? Try to do something? He didn't spare much time thinking about it though. Lucy needed him more than anyone.

Wyatt wasn't counting the minutes they stayed like that. It felt like an eternity. Eventually, Christopher looked down at them, telling them they needed to move, to talk. Wyatt locked blazing blue eyes with Christopher, his voice saying he was only going to move if Lucy was ready. Then he bent down to Lucy, asking her in a soft voice if she was ready to move. She didn't reply, but she uncurled herself and tried standing on shaky legs. Wyatt's arms went to her sides, supporting her as she stood.

Lucy started walking toward the row of seats in the waiting room closest to them. Wyatt's hands slipped off of her waist, Lucy holding her own weight. He couldn't say he was surprised. She was an independent woman, he knew that the second he met her.

It didn't matter to him though. In that moment he didn't care if she was independent or strong. Her sister could be dying in one of the hospital rooms right now. It happened right in front of her eyes. She had a right to fall apart. To lean on someone. But she was used to holding her own and it showed. Wyatt and the rest of the team warily followed Lucy until she crumbled into a waiting room seat, resting her head on her left hand and looking years older than any healthy, young woman should.

Wyatt didn't want to feel this throbbing in his chest, like his heart was bleeding. He didn't want to look at Lucy and see himself falling apart after Jess's death. He didn't want to care. He didn't want to start caring about someone else just to have life rip them away.

He didn't want to leave her either. Christopher's voice brought Wyatt back to the present. "Logan, Carlin, Mason, Marri, you will all go home and get a night of sleep before reporting for duty tomorrow." She ordered.

Wyatt opened his mouth to argue, but Christopher cut him off. "This is non-negotiable, Agent Logan. Lucy stays here, the rest of you leave. Is that understood?" she asked, her eyes stopping on every agent until they gave her a nod of confirmation. Wyatt gave his grudgingly. "Good. Then go. Now." Christopher didn't wait to see if her agents left, turning away and flipping her phone open. Wyatt follows Rufus out of the sliding doors of the hospital. As he leaves he can't help it, he turns around and takes one last look at Lucy.

Wyatt sighs, his dark bedroom ceiling replacing his memories of the hospital and the broken woman there. Maybe he won't get any sleep tonight, but he might as well try. He shuts his eyes, trying to shut out Lucy Preston at the same time. Thinking of her will only lead to a fitful night of sleep.

* * *

Denise Christopher comes into work at the same time as any other day, bright and early. The dark circles under her eyes or grim lines set into her face aren't unusual either. That's just what happens to a person when part of the world uses their shoulders as a resting place. She doesn't do anything differently, yet she can feel the stares of other agents and hear the whispers. She wishes if someone had something to say or ask, they would just come out and do it. This isn't high school. Even she can't deny that today is different. She feels about a hundred pounds heavier walking up the stairs to her office, every step a tremendous effort.

She'd hoped to keep Lucy's situation under wraps for the moment. Her plan is already shot to hell at 6:15 in the morning. It can't really be helped though. News travels fast. Besides, last night she'd called in agents to stand guard at the hospital, not trusting that the man who did this would stay away. Not trusting that Lucy was safe or the man wouldn't come back and just finish off Amy. Shifts and rounds were established, taking a section of the FBI's forces to protect one of their own. Of course the news wouldn't stay hushed.

The door of her office finally looms in front of her, a welcome sanctuary. If only she could shut herself away all day. But she has a team. One she asked for, one she assembled herself. Denise enters her office and sheds her light jacket looking around the room. It somehow looks different than yesterday.

Probably because she knew Lucy was supposed to be here this morning. She was supposed to be here working on the Rittenhouse corkboard in the closet of Denise's office. She was supposed to be looking like a college professor as she examined evidence, research it, compared it, and pinned up. Her face would be set in determination, and Denise would be fondly and habitually worried about the young woman.

But Lucy was at the hospital waiting to hear if her sister would survive those crucial twenty-four hours.

Denise swallows and turns her back on the closet door. The closet she's come to think of as Lucy's. Her throat feels thick so Denise quickly swallows and jams her emotions into a dusty corner in her brain to be dealt with later. There's not time for that. Not for her. She's the leader, the composed one. She'll grieve for the Preston girls, for her friend Lucy, later when she's home in her wife's arms. Taking a deep breath, she prepares to go downstairs and see her new team.

First things first, Denise extracts her phone from her purse and texts her wife to tell her she's at work and she's fine. Michelle was worried after Christopher's long night. She arranged security at the hospital, talked to the hospital about Amy's treatment and Lucy's mother. Carol Preston was still in her "homemade" hospital room at the Preston residence. Denise sent a few agents and hospital personnel to move her in a private room at the same hospital as Amy. Work and healthcare should cover the brunt of the medical bills, especially because Amy's injuries were directly correlated to Lucy's line of work. After all that, Christopher got home and allowed herself a two-hour power nap before rising for another day of work. Pumping herself full of caffeine wasn't her favorite thing to do, but Denise didn't complain or protest when Michelle shoved a large travel mug of coffee into her hands as she was leaving. Having kids, Denise has pulled long nights and hardly any hours of sleep before. Heavily caffeinated coffee helped her push through the day until she could get home and attempt to catch up on sleep. Denise grabs her cup to take a gulp of coffee before heading downstairs. Before she must take charge and act like she's unaffected by the events of yesterday.

* * *

Jiya doesn't know what to do. Although, that seems to be the general consensus throughout the team's headquarters. Wyatt sits at his desk, tapping a pen against the open files on his desk but his eyes are riveted on Lucy's corkboards, covered with a white sheet. Rufus has tech in front of him, a prototype to create a smaller and more secure comm for undercover operations. The tech sits untouched in front of Rufus, his brown eyes flicking sadly from his Star Wars cup to Lucy's boards, almost like he's unsure where to look. Mason isn't in the room and Christopher hasn't come down either. There was no field training this morning because everyone knew they wouldn't be able to focus. The only thing people would be able to focus on is the Lucy-sized gap in their group. It doesn't seem to be much better now.

No one here knows Lucy extremely well or personally, well, except perhaps Denise. They all feel acute pain for the young woman and what she's going through but everything else is muddled.

Jiya doesn't even know why they bothered showing up today. This team was assembled specially for the purpose of catching Garcia Flynn and the only one who can tell them where he might be to do said catching was Lucy Preston. Lucy Preston was currently in a hospital about 28 minutes away waiting to hear what her sister's chance of survival was.

Jiya sighs, staring blankly at her computer screen, slouching in her seat. She kind of wants to go back to the tech part of the FBI, where the rooms were dimmed because the computer screens lit up the space, and there was a separate room for physically putting the tech together once you had the design. Where everyone knew computer speak and slang, and challenged each other to video or programming games on breaks. She misses Anthony and Taco Tuesdays. She misses knowing exactly what she was doing and her purpose. She misses her comfort zone. She knows "it's always a good thing to get out of your comfort zone"—courtesy of her mother—but this was only day three on this new team. And look what already happened. They never got the chance to come together and it already felt like they were starting to fall apart. Before Jiya could delve further into that train of thought, Christopher _click, clicked_ her way into headquarters with her usual heels.

"Well, I can see that no one in here's being very productive, so gear up. We're going to a crime scene." She announces. Jiya tries standing up so quickly that she has to catch herself on the desk to keep from crashing to the ground. After getting her bearings, she opens her mouth to ask Christopher exactly where they are going.

Wyatt beats her to it. "Where are we going ma'am?" he asks.

"The Preston household," Christopher states matter-of-fact, leaving no room for argument. "Now gear up and meet me in the garage in 10." With that, the agent _clicks_ out the same way she came.

* * *

Rufus is strapped into a bulletproof vest, a gun with the safety switched on rests in a hostler at his waist, and he marches toward the garage where Christopher and the rest of his team will be. Coils twist and writhe in his stomach. He's never been to a crime scene before. Only stuck behind a computer. And he knows from seeing Amy that's there is going to be a lot of blood at this crime scene.

That's why he almost simultaneously pukes and jumps out of his skin when a hand darts out and drags him into a corner. Rufus isn't sure what he would have done given more time, but Connor whispers a frantic "it's me," and shushes Rufus before he gets a chance to react.

"Connor?" Rufus hisses. "What the hell? I have to go to the garage; the team is waiting for me!"

"Keep your voice down!" Connor whispers, sneaking glances at their surroundings. "Here," he pulls something thin out of his suit jacket, holding it out to Rufus without looking at him.

"Another recorder!" Rufus whisper-shouts. "No! We are going to Lucy's house to investigate her sister's… attack," Rufus catches himself almost calling it a murder. But Amy Preston's not dead yet. Not as far as he knows. "I won't—I… do you know how wrong that is? I mean, on an investigation, it is a thousand different kinds of wrong. But invading Lucy's privacy and home like that? After what just happened? No way." Rufus can feel the anger rising, filling his veins with blistering heat.

"You think I want to do this? To Lucy? To _you_?" Connor asks, his dark eyes finally meeting Rufus's, his eyes imploring. "We must do this Rufus. For ourselves and everyone we care about. This is the only way." Connor holds out the recorder expectedly. Rufus eyes it with disdain, wishing he could take it and just stomp it to bits.

"Why do they even want these recordings? What does Rittenhouse even do with them?" Rufus asks. He doesn't really know what he wants Connor to say. Maybe he wants a reason to betray his team, to disappoint his mother. A better reason than threats. Foolish thoughts. Anything Connor could say would just make Rufus want to crush the recorder even more.

"Don't," Connor's voice isn't a whisper anymore, like he doesn't care if anyone spots them anymore. "Don't say that name out loud. Never say that name out loud again." Connor commands, his eyes turning hard and flinty. He takes Rufus's hand and slaps the recorder in it.

* * *

Wyatt pulls up in front of the Preston residence. It's a big, sprawling house with a green lawn and plenty of space between the neighboring houses, filled with trees and different plants trimmed and framing the house. Wyatt can see Lucy living there, with her silk shirts and polite manners. And with who her mother was. Carol Preston. Wyatt sighs as he spies the crime scene tape encircling the property and the CIA agents swarming around. Courtesy of Carol Preston he imagines. "Absolutely not." Christopher mutters from the passenger seat, with her eyes stuck on the yellow letters labeling the vans and personnel CIA. Her phone goes back up to her ear where it had been glued for nearly the entire ride here. Wyatt doesn't know if it's logistics about the investigation, the team, or if she's being updated on Amy Preston's condition.

Wyatt glances in the rearview mirror to where Jiya and Rufus sit. They both look uncomfortable waiting there to investigate their first crime scene. Well, Rufus's second. That train of thought makes Wyatt want to bang his head on the steering wheel. It's like they're civilians with how little they are prepared for this. His only comfort is that the chances of whoever assaulted Amy coming back here are incredibly slim. He glances back over at Christopher, talking on the phone. He sighs and pulls his gun out of his holster, checking the magazine, checking that the safety is flipped on. He's just finished his inspection when Christopher lowers the phone and throws the door open. "Let's go." She says before placing her first heel on the pavement. Wyatt slips his gun back into his holster, arranging his suit jacket to cover it up. He pushes the door open to see Rufus stumbling out into the street. He contains the urge to roll his eyes at the other man and stomps around to Christopher's side. By the time he's there, Christopher is already walking briskly toward the caution tape staked at the front line of the property. Wyatt jogs to catch up with her when he really wants to get back in the car and drive away.

He doesn't want to go into Lucy's house. He doesn't want to see the blood and he doesn't want to see where it happened. He knows what will happen when he sees it. He'll go back to the night when Jessica and he fought. When he, like an idiot, let her get out of the car. Then took twenty minutes to calm down and come back for her. Twenty minutes. She wasn't there. He called, searched. She didn't come back. He panicked and called the police. He got in front of a screen to beg for his wife's safe return. It consumed him and all it led to was discovering she was dead. The coldness seeped into his bones with the news, and then the anger. It wasn't a burning anger. Instead, it just made him colder and colder and colder. It changed his grief into a mission, a mission to hunt down whoever killed his wife. His amazing, strong, beautiful, loving wife.

He doesn't want to be reminded that Lucy's going through the same kind of thing. He already regrets holding her at the hospital. It seems heartless to think that, but he's not big on showing his emotions. But there, in the hospital, seeing Lucy fall apart made him vulnerable. Made him remember when he fell apart when Jessica died. But there was no one there for him. No one to hold him. So he held her for both of them. He didn't think about how it would feel to hold her in his arms, though. To hold her there, to feel her shaking and sobbing and have something move inside of him.

He's been walking on automatic toward the house until Christopher stops in front of him. He nearly barrels into her, but Rufus's arm darts out and grips his arm, yanking him backward and out of his thought spiral. Christopher reaches into her coat and pulls out her badge, flashing it to the CIA agent standing behind the tape. "FBI," she announces to the agent. "I'm Agent Christopher and I'm here to overtake this investigation." Her voice is full of authority, leaving no room for argument but the agent looks unimpressed. He gestures at another agent close by.

The agent comes jogging up, a middle-aged man with glasses and brown hair, a receding hairline, a developing beard covering the lower half of this face. "What's going on here?" he asks in a gruff voice.

"Agent Christopher with the FBI," Christopher sticks out her hand and the new agent shakes it. "I'm here to take control of this investigation." As soon as the words leave her mouth, the new agent gives a slight cough, a small smile, and looks down.

"Well, Agent Christopher, I'm Agent Neville with the CIA and there will no be taking over of this investigation. This was an attack on the CIA's own." Agent Neville informs then firmly.

"An attack on the CIA's own?" Christopher scoffs.

"Carol Preston was the previous director of the CIA." Neville states.

"I'm aware of that," Christopher says, her tone boarding on annoyance. "But Carol Preston is not active duty. Lucy Preston is. And she's a member of the FBI. This makes it our case." Christopher's voice holds challenge.

"Sorry, Agent Christopher, but the CIA was here first, and we have jurisdiction. Besides, I think it's hard to take over an investigation will only four agents, don't you?" Neville asks, throwing in a jab.

Christopher gives him a tight-lipped smile. "Well, Agent Neville, then you can take that up with your current director because they just handed jurisdiction to the FBI. So please, call your commanding officer, let me give you the news, and then pack up your vans and your people and get out of here." Wyatt's eyebrows creep up to his hair as Christopher talks. He already knew she wasn't a woman to be messed with, but she was usually quite tactful. Especially with superior officers or other organizations. Amy Preston's attack has taken a toll on her, more than she lets anyone see. All Wyatt knows is that he's glad it's Agent Neville on the receiving end of Christopher's wraith.

Agent Neville looks at Christopher doubtfully and with a hint of scorn. Christopher gestures his suit jacket pocket, indicating he should call his commanding officer. He does. Wyatt nearly laughs outright at the man's sour expression as the phone call progresses. He manages to smother his laughter with a smirk. When Neville hangs up the phone, he walks over to the younger agent right behind the tape and leans over to whisper in his ear. The young agent nods and goes to round up the rest of the CIA. They start packing up their investigation and piling into their vans. Neville tucks his phone away and crosses his arms over his chest, looking up at Agent Christopher who has a satisfied look on her face. "You might have managed to get this investigation from us, but we will get it back. Carol Preston is one of our own. The Preston name is the legacy of the CIA." His face is set and lined as he marches away. Christopher doesn't duck under the tape until the last CIA van pulls away from the Preston household.

"Holy cow." Rufus mutters under his breath, leaning in closer to Jiya and Wyatt. "Agent Christopher just went completely badass on the CIA." Wyatt can't help himself from snorting at the comment. He might not know the tech overly well, but it still seems like such a Rufus thing to say. He's not sure if Christopher heard Rufus but a second later she's holding up the tape and striding confidently toward the large house. Wyatt hurries after her, hearing Jiya and Rufus scuttling to follow her.

They march up the walkway and the steps leading to the front door. For a few drawn-out moments, they all stand there, the mood somber. Once they open that door, they know what they'll find. It's Christopher who takes the doorknob and twists, pushing it so that it swings inward with a creak.

The house is empty with a certain chill in the air but Wyatt knows there isn't anything physically there. It's all psychological. To anyone else, they'd look in here and see a house. One that's large with tasteful decorating. Knowing what happened here makes a difference, a big one.

Wyatt steps over the threshold, his whole body urging him to turn around. Directly to the left of the door, a sweeping staircase leads upstairs and the hallway directly in front of them leads to the kitchen. There's an opening directly to the right, a gap in the hallway. Peering in, Wyatt sees what looks like…disconnected hospital equipment, a heart monitor with wires dangling down, not attached to anything. Christopher glances in that direction. "Carol Preston was staying in there, I had her moved to the same hospital as Amy. That room's clear." She states. Her words trigger something in Wyatt's heart, a fissure working its way through the organ. He knew her mother was sick. Everybody knew. But he didn't think about it, not at the hospital. She has no one. He remembers hearing about her father dying a few years back. Now her mother was sick and her sister might die. Wyatt shakes his head, he's here on a mission.

He follows Christopher as she walks down the hallway. It leads into a living room, plush carpeting, fluffy couches, a large flat-screen Tv, and a coffee table in front of one of the long couches. He sees drops of blood staining the carpet, blood that dripped when they were transporting Amy to the ambulance and then the hospital. Craning his neck over his shoulder, he glances the red drops dried on the hardwood of the hallway leading to the door. He hadn't noticed before, but the dark red is much starker against the white carpet. He hears Jiya or Rufus, maybe both, draw in a shaky breath behind him. They're getting closer. He follows the drops with his eyes seeing the path they make. The drops lead through a doorway into the kitchen with a big open area and plenty of counter space for prepping food. His eyes stay on the drops, following them. Faintly, he can hear the click of Christopher's heels behind him, Rufus's dress shoes, and the soft step of Jiya's beat up converse. The drops are fatter and gatherings of them litter the floor as Wyatt approaches another door. This next room is it.

Unknowingly, Wyatt's steps get smaller and smaller, prolonging the time until he steps into that room and is thrown back. He gulps in the threshold before quickly stepping over it. This was ridiculous. He'd been to tons of crime scenes before. He was an operative. He'd seen blood, dead bodies, gore. Some of those bodies being people he'd known, friends. Some of that blood and gore he had put there.

He nudges the door open further until it reveals a dining room. The tile of the kitchen switches to sleek hardwood and a long, polished, wooden dining table takes up most of the space. Why do they have such a big table with only three people in the house, an insignificant voice in the back of Wyatt's mind wonders. He ignores it, focuses on the room instead.

It's a disturbed scene, the CIA investigating before they kicked them out. A large knife coated in blood sits in an evidence bag on the table, the letters CIA glaring and bold from its surface. The event obviously happened at the far end of the table, where the much larger concentration of blood is. His foot stutters as he goes to take the next step. He's internally berating himself for being so scared and emotional when Christopher speaks up. "This is the room it happened," she says, stating the obvious. "Agent Logan and I will take pictures and collect evidence samples. Carlin, Marri, you will find the house's security system and see if it got any video or anything about what happened here."

"Security system?" Jiya asks uncertainly.

"Carol Preston was the previous director of the CIA and Lucy is an FBI agent. They'll have a security system. Look for alarm and video." Christopher orders. Jiya and Rufus step forward to leave the camera and evidence collecting kit on the table before leaving in search of the security system. Christopher picks up the camera, gesturing with her head for Wyatt to open up the evidence kit. He does and pulls latex gloves on over his hands. He pulls out an evidence bag and carefully fits the CIA evidence bag with the knife in it inside. He doesn't transfer the knife, he's smart enough to know that residue from the knife has already gotten on the inside of the CIA bag. He takes evidence samples of the dried blood, moving closer to the other end of the table as he does. When he reaches the opposite end, he sees where the big event took place.

The chair closest to the end of the table is pushed far out…and slathered in blood. The seat cushion is stained scarlet, barely any of the normal color left showing. The back of the chair has lines of dried blood on it from where it dripped. The legs have much more blood on them, almost covered completely in dark red from where the blood flowed when it dripped down, down to puddle on the floor. Looking down at those puddles, still congealing, his stomach turned. No one really knows how much blood is in someone until they're bleeding out in front of you. It seems impossible for that much blood to keep pouring out of a person. But it does. It keeps pouring, and dripping, and running, and spilling. Around the chair are bloody ropes, presumably from where Amy was tied to it. He knows they won't have the full story until Lucy gives an account of what happened. It's the only way to know for sure.

Wyatt steps back to let Christopher get pictures of the scene, mostly undisturbed before he starts to pack it away. As he lifts the ropes to place them in a bag, color catches his eye. It's a shirt, Lucy's shirt. It's the turquoise silk button-down Lucy was wearing to work yesterday. The shirt looks like someone soaked it in blood and only a few turquoise patches peek out. He remembers seeing the alarming amount of bleeding from Amy's hand and shoulder, the blood had soaked right through the gauze as they were wheeling her in. He imagines a desperate Lucy, kneeling on the floor, ripping off her shirt and holding it against Amy's wound to try and staunch the bleeding. He picks up the shirt and seals it into an evidence bag. He works efficiently, trying to shut down his buzzing brain as he does. His methods don't work today and all through his task he's forced to listen to the chatter of his own brain, thinking about Lucy and Jessica and loss.

When he's finished, he assembles a collapsible evidence from the kit and starts packing away everything he's bagged. He hefts it in his arms to carry it out to the van when Jiya and Rufus come bumbling into the room, panting. "We found it!" Jiya exclaims to Christopher, standing there impatiently waiting for them to tell her the news.

"You were right. There was an alarm system and video surveillance, both linked and secured into their home computer system. It's brilliant system really, you can't access it without getting on the home network. It's heavily password protected and encrypted, which we may have done a little hacking to break. We're not going to jail for that right? I mean, hacking's illegal but we're the FBI and sometimes we just have to what we got to do, you know—" Rufus starts rambling.

Jiya cuts him off after seeing the unimpressed look on Christopher's face when Rufus starts getting off track. "We had to hack into the computer, yes, but what we found afterword…it's actually pretty scary. Whoever did this couldn't be alone. Someone from the outside connected to the network and shut off the alarm system so whoever attacked Amy could get in undetected. It hasn't been reactivated since. The video had more encryption, it couldn't be deactivated from the outside. Whoever came in, they might not have been alone. If one person came in, they'd have to have apprehended Amy first, tied her up, and then went back to cut off the video feed and delete what it already recorded. It's far more likely that there were two men. One to get Amy, one to shut off the video surveillance. But they'd still have to delete the footage of them breaking in. Whoever it was, they're good. They didn't just delete the footage. They wiped all memories from the system, from the card, the computer. I don't know if we will be able to recover anything. There is a digital footprint. It's tiny, corrupted, but there. With enough time and resources, I might be able to decode it and maybe, just maybe it'll lead us back to who did this. The one really good thing is, whoever did this, their fingerprints could be on the keyboard." By the end of Jiya's explanation, she was slightly bouncing on her toes, excited at the prospect of being able to catch one of the people who did this.

"You really think they'd be that sloppy?" Christopher questions. "They did all this and you think they'd just leave fingerprints?"

Jiya visibly deflates. "Um… I mean, we can hope, right? Catch one of these guys?"

Christopher evaluates Jiya coolly for a few moments. Then, she slowly nods. "Yes, yes we can hope. Bag the computer and let's get going."

* * *

Jiya slouches outside of the headquarters' door, waiting to spot Christopher. Ever since returning from Lucy's house, she's been itching to get her hands on that computer, break down that footprint and catch the perpetrators. At least one of them. But Christopher had them wheel it down to the forensic department as soon as they returned. They'll dust for fingerprints, run scans and tests to find any little detail about what happened. Jiya had to admit she was a bit surprised Christopher didn't tell them they were getting a five-minute crash course in forensics and then analyzing the evidence themselves. After all, she was training them so that she could throw them in the field. Inexperienced agents. It made Jiya's heart pound every time she thought about it.

She looks down at her worn Twenty-One Pilots t-shirt, fighting the urge to untuck it and play with the hem for something to do. Looking down at her shirt, it's a testament to what a long day its been. She slept in this shirt and was too tired to change out of it in the morning. She just threw on slacks and a dress suit jacket, tied her converse, and was out the door. The familiar _click click_ of Christopher's heels alerts her to the arrival of her commanding officer. "Agent Christopher!" she calls out to the woman as she starts ascending the steps to her office. "Are they done—"

"Not yet, Agent Marri," Christopher says gently. "I promise that as soon as forensics is finished with the computer, it will be all yours. What you can do now, what you _all_ can do, is go home."

"What? Go home?" Jiya can hardly believe her ears.

"Yes. We've all had a very long day. Forensics won't be done processing the evidence by tonight, I do know that. So go home and get a good night sleep so you can track down the bastard who did this to Amy and Lucy tomorrow, okay?" Christopher phrases it like a question, but Jiya knows better. Briefly, she wonders what would happen if she refuses. Would Christopher call some buff field agents up to throw her out of the building? Somehow, Jiya doesn't doubt that she would.

"Yes, ma'am." She mutters, turning around to go tell the rest of the team to pack it up and go home. She didn't look forward to having to convince Wyatt. That was one stubborn man.

* * *

Lucy's eyes watched the TV in the waiting room, the colors and voices all blurring together in her perception. She didn't really know what else to do though. She'd been here all day, her butt getting numb from sitting in one of these chairs so long as she waited to see if Amy would last out the first 24 hours. Focusing on the TV was her attempting to shut down her hyperactive brain. Didn't work. She actually spent most the day praying. Lucy was religious, believed in some higher power, in God. Now, she prayed to that higher power to please spare her little sister. She even offered herself in Amy's place if God wanted to take someone to Heaven. Or Hell, but Lucy was hoping she'd earned a spot in Heaven.

24 hours if almost up. At the beginning of those 24 hours, Lucy thought there was no way for life to be more unbearable than it was right now.

Stupid, she was stupid.

Every single hour counting down to those 24 got more unbearable. Every time she saw a doctor walking down the hallway to the waiting room, she couldn't breathe. Every time, they called another name and Lucy's lungs expanded to let oxygen in again.

Lucy had been wallowing in fright and pity between praying for those first four hours. But at about hour two, her wallowing had been interrupted by commotion. A patient was being wheeled into the hospital. That was nothing new, nothing surprising. Except that patient was her mother. A doctor who had wheeled her in came over to Lucy and told her that they had to move her mom from her house due to lack of supervision. She'd be put in a private room and have professional care. All the words seemed to come at her muffled, as if through a curtain. She recalls nodding robotically, the look of sympathy in the doctor's eyes before he left. She had almost opened her mouth to tell them not to bother. Her mother was dying, Amy was still alive. Amy was priority, her mother wasn't.

At about hour five, she noticed the FBI security in the waiting room. They'd probably been there for a lot longer, but Lucy had been too distracted to notice. The moment she sees them, her brain starts whizzing and whirring with all the reasons they could be there. She'd squeezed her eyes shut and massaged her temples, trying to shut her brain off, shut it down, get it to stop working. She'd didn't want to think about why they might be there. All that mattered was Amy.

Somehow, she had drifted off a few times in the past few hours. Exhaustion was weighing on her, but she was too keyed up to stay asleep for more than 45 minutes. Hour 24 was fast approaching, almost here and a couple of hot tears slipped out Lucy's dark eyes as she thought about what the doctor would say; dead or alive. Lucy angrily wiped away the tears. She was so sick and tired of crying. It felt like that was all she did for two hours after Amy was attacked. She sobbed holding her sister, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, when she got here, and then she even ended up collapsing when the doctor told her Amy was in a coma. She fuzzily recalls Wyatt holding her, and curling up into his warmth. Her face burns hot with embarrassment when she thinks about it, about him and those blue eyes. How is she going to be able to look him in the eyes again? Sure, he was the one who voluntarily caught her and then comforted her, but then she cried into him like a two-year old. Wyatt was a seasoned field agent. He reminded her of a soldier. But not a soldier that went to support groups and talked about his feelings and tried to process them and understand them and heal. Those blue eyes were a damn, holding back a flood of emotions that he kept inside.

Lucy wasn't wired that way. It just made it worse to think that she acted so emotionally with someone that kept it all inside. Someone who she inexplicably felt a connection to. This what not the time to think about Wyatt! Internally, she berated herself. At least he was a safer topic than her repeatedly asking herself, dead or not dead, dead or not dead?

"Family of Amy Preston?" The same doctor who told Lucy about Amy's condition earlier stands next to the check-in desk. Lucy scrambles up from her seat. If Amy had died, they would have told her already. Right? They wouldn't keep that from her. They wouldn't wait for the end of the 24 hours just to tell her that Amy had died hours ago. _Please let her live, please let her live, please let her live,_ she begs.

"Sister," Lucy says breathlessly. "sister of Amy Preston."

"Yes, Miss Preston I remember." The doctor glances down at her chart and then back up at Lucy, her mouth stretching into a smile. "She made it. A few times it seemed like she wasn't going to, but she pulled through. She's alive… for now." The doctor says.

Lucy's knees grow weak at the news. Her face contorts into a smile, a foreign feeling given her last 24 hours, and tears of happiness leak out onto her cheeks. She'll allow these tears because Amy just survived those first critical 24 hours. Lucy Preston's sister is still alive and breathing today. She can cry for that.

* * *

 **So... what do you think? I kind of feel like I'm not exactly getting Rufus and Jiya quite right, especially not Rufus's humor or Jiya's strength. I tried showing Jiya's strength through her sympathy and how much she wants to catch the guy who did this. I'm also worried I made Wyatt and/or Lucy a little too OOC. We all know Wyatt's not exactly forthcoming with emotion, but I wrote it thinking that Wyatt was thinking back on his wife's death and feeling vulnerable, which kind of showed. I know that in the show, Lucy didn't do that much crying when Amy was wiped from existence. But about 5 seconds after she found out, she had to jump back in the Lifeboat to save history. The way I think of it is that she never really had much time to process. This time, she does and she falls apart. Amy might die, her mother is dying. It's nothing on how strong Lucy is, she is still an incredibly strong woman. She just has to deal with the fact that the most important person to her might die and even if they don't, will probably be crippled for the rest of their life. It's just a very difficult situation.**

 **So please tell me if you think I got them right. I really hope that you enjoyed it. Please remember to leave a review. It'll make me smile! I love all of you! Thank you!**


	4. The Hunt Begins

**PLEASE READ! (Yes, I know this author's note looks painfully long, but please indulge me)**

 **I apologize so much for how long it has taken me to get this chapter out. A special apology to TheVelvetDusk because I told her back in March (I think) that I was trying to get my latest chapter up before the end of the month. Obviously, this did not happen. I feel like I owe you guys an explanation, so here it is:**

 **I am a high schooler, and my grades come first. I am taking 2 AP classes and 1 IB class. I am also enrolled in JROTC, where I am a Company XO this year. That means I am key to planning the biannual blood drives my school hosts. That means I have to dedicate time to that. In fact, the last blood drive of the school year was today (turns out me and donating blood don't mix well. I — who hate needles and blood — watched the blood going into the tube so the woman could test my iron. The nurses had to catch me because I basically passed out. Joy)**

 **In addition, I do another extracurricular that eats up SO MUCH time. This activity just ended in April, in Dayton Ohio. Give me a shout out in the comments if April 12-14 in Dayton means anything to you. This activity also happens in the summer, starting up much too soon for my liking. I need a break.**

 **AP tests and finals are approaching, and my SATs were just a little while ago. Technically I should have been studying for them, but I barely have. I'll probably do fine, and I'll retake them anyway. So here I am writing fanfiction for this beloved fandom instead. I was going to try and pull an all-nighter to get this finished before my SATs, but I did actually need sleep to take the test.**

 **I also went to Spain from the end of March to the beginning of April. It was the school trip. It was such an amazing, eye-opening experience and I feel so blessed that I got to go. Then I got back to school, got swamped, and I still don't think I'm caught up. Yay.**

 **One last thing, I have depression, anxiety, and mild OCD. For a very long time, I did not have coping strategies or therapy to help me. Earlier this year, I was in a REALLY bad place. One of the worst I have been in. This interfered with a lot, including this. Luckily, I now have a therapist that is really, really helping me. I'm working on getting better and feeling happier. We pinned down that one of my coping strategies is to write, but the type of writing I do to cope is poetry. So when I have been writing, it's been trying to deal with this in poet form. I basically bleed my heart out on the page in some really depressing (yet award-winning) poetry. So yeah.**

 **Thank you for reading this and I am sorry again.**

 **If you want someone to thank for this chapter getting posted, thank TheVelvetDusk. I read her latest story today and I thought "Okay, I** _ **have**_ **to get this next chapter out as soon as possible". Which still wasn't as soon as I'd hoped, at all. Real life really, really likes to kiss my ass. She also leaves the best reviews and her work is just so amazing. It's wonderful and uplifting (even when it's angsty) and helps to heal our Lyatt hearts while our babies work through this Jessica thing. If you have not read her work, go do it. For yourself.**

 **Okay, now a few notes about the actual chapter:**

 **The first part of this chapter is very heavy on the Denise and Lucy. The first few scenes are entirely their perspectives, and this is for a reason. I hope it doesn't bother anyone because I usually intersperse perspectives.**

 **I know that the way I usually do my perspectives is to put in a line, change the scene, and with that scene change comes someone else's perspective. As I was reading over this, I realized that in the first scene, I switch from Lucy to Denise's point of view with no scene transition. I did it entirely subconsciously, and I think, reading over it, that it works. But if not, I would really like to know. Thanks!**

 **BTW: Tell me if anyone seems OOC please. Please read and review.**

* * *

Lucy is exhausted.

The type of exhaustion that settles down into your body, turning your bones to lead. Cheeks feeling sticky and gross from all her tears, eyes red and dried out. Dried blood on her clothes; dark, conspicuous patches that flake like a sickening snow storm. The hospital staff had offered her temporary clothes, one nurse going so far as to say she had an extra pair of scrubs if she needed them.

She had opened her mouth to say yes, had wanted to say yes, but it came out as a polite no. Lucy was torn. It was a bit twisted, but these clothes were some of the last things to come into contact with Amy, as ruined and bloodstained as they may be. Part of her wanted to shed the clothes as soon as possible and burn them. Another part never wanted to take them off, to fight and claw and spit at anyone who suggested she remove them. She almost wanted to rub her skin against the fabric, inhale that awful, coppery scent as if she could absorb any particles of Amy that had leaked onto the clothes with her blood.

Lucy is exhausted. Exhausted, and conflicted, and the hammer banging away at the interior of her skull isn't helping her either.

More than anything, she hates being a little rowboat haplessly getting tossed around by the colossal ocean waves on all sides.

Control. She needs control. She lives and breathes control.

Now, that little blurry sanctuary of control isn't even visible with the NSA's best surveillance tech.

Lucy slumps down further in her seat, closing her eyes against the harsh waiting room lights. The hammer picks up its pace.

About 2 hours ago, Lucy heard the best news she'll ever hear in her life; Amy made it through the hardest part. But the best news in her life only happened because the worst thing imaginable had. She'd done more crying in the past 48 hours than she ever had. She'd only ever seen the horror of endless buckets of blood through a OCODTF and TV screen. Lucy prays that nothing new comes her way for at least the next 24 hours.

But she guesses that God used up all his goodwill for the day by keeping Amy alive.

The comfort of a mattress. Warmth of blankets. The relief of sleep. Now that those critical 24 hours are over, all she wants is to curl up and forget about all this for as long as she can. She highly doubts that life will be that kind to her. Nightmares are sure to plague her as soon as she drifts off.

It's a moot point anyway. She can't go home. Can't walk through that house, by the kitchen where it happened. If she tries, she knows her empty stomach will shove bile and acid up her throat.

Lucy is so lost in the delirious pain from her headache, wishing to be anywhere but here, that she doesn't hear Agent Christopher the first few times she says her name.

" _Lucy."_ Denise's hand applying gentle pressure is the catalyst that rips Lucy's eyelids open and jerks her into awareness. Sinking into a crouching position, as if addressing her young daughter, Denise proceeds with compassion and caution. "I heard that Amy made it, that's good. I know you don't really want to leave here, but you need sleep. And food. My agents have informed me you haven't eaten anything," a touch of fondness creeps into Denise's voice. She remembers coming down to see Lucy before assembling the team, demanding updates on Garcia Flynn. How Melissa, a fellow profiler/analyst would interrupt their conservation to shove food into Lucy's hands and not go back to work until she ate it. It was one of Lucy's bad habits, that everything including hunger and sleep faded away when she was in the zone of analyzing. And she was always in the zone. Hearing the guard at the door inform her that Lucy has basically starved herself simultaneously worried and endeared Denise.

"Can we add painkillers to the list?" Lucy asks tiredly.

"Headache?" Denise asks quietly. Lucy nods. "Probably brought on by stress and lack of sleep. We'll get you to a bed first and if you still have that headache when you wake up, then we'll get the medicine out, okay?" Lucy nods her confirmation and Denise is sure that she is too tired to argue even if she wants to.

"Where am I supposed to go?" Lucy's voice is little more than a whisper. "I _can't_ go home." She whimpers. Her dark eyes are unfocused, and she sounds so desperate and afraid. Almost childlike. It worms its way straight into Denise's heart, the mother in her reacting ferociously.

"You're right, you can't. Especially because it's a crime scene." Surprise flits across Lucy's face for a brief second, the thought not having crossed her mind in all the other chaos. "I've been making calls all day, trying to find somewhere. I don't have one yet, so you'll be coming home with me." _That_ statement shocks both of them.

Denise hadn't intended to say that, to offer up her home. The plan was to put Lucy into a nearby motel under a fake name with round-the-clock FBI security. A temporary solution until she worked something out.

"I know we have safehouses around here." Lucy murmurs, half question and half statement.

"You _know_ why I'm not putting you in a safehouse." Christopher reminds her sternly.

"Using that logic, isn't this whole thing an incredible risk?" Lucy asks with closed eyes.

"I didn't have any other options; every choice presented a risk. I tried to choose the lowest risk. Besides, only you would question the soundness of my logic with the state you're in."

"My state? I'd say it's pretty good considering the rest of the Preston family is fighting a coma with the potential of waking up to brain damage or never waking up at all, and terminal cancer." Lucy sighs bitterly.

Denise doesn't know what to say for a moment, her mouth going dry and eyes softening. She thinks of Mark, Olivia, and Michelle, each one of them a home, holding pieces of her heart. She can't imagine them laying on a hospital bed, a phantom of who they used to be. "You're right. Now come on, let's get you some rest."

* * *

The wooden door swings open to reveal Michelle Christopher, faced heavily lined and dressed in pajamas. Denise immediately has the urge to envelop her wife inside her arms, rock her back and forth, place a kiss on her forehead, and promise that she would take care of everything, so Michelle could relax.

But that isn't possible right now. Denise's terrorist is still at large, she's investigating fragments of evidence about a secret cabal organization buried deep into the government, and one of her own was just attacked. Not that Michelle knows any of this. Days like this, Denise can't help but wonder if Michelle wants to know. She's always telling her she doesn't, but then Denise shows up at 3:00 in the morning with Lucy looking like hell with dried blood on her clothes.

One look outside, at Lucy, and Michelle is stepping outside and closing the door firmly behind her. "Denise, what is going on?" every few seconds her eyes flicker to Lucy.

"She doesn't have anywhere else to go right now—" Denise starts, speaking in a hushed tone but fast to say everything she needs to before Michelle interrupts her. Unsuccessfully.

"So she's staying here?" Michelle sounds incredulous.

"Please, Michelle." Denise pleads.

"Denise, you know how I feel about Lucy. She comes over to dinner, she's the only colleague of yours that I know, she helps Olivia with homework, for God's sake. But think of Olivia and Mark. They are inside sleeping right now. Hopefully. Lucy is covered in blood.  
You really want our kids to see that?" Michelle's voice increases in volume the longer she speaks.

"Miche—"

"Denise, they are kids. What they know is their mommy's job is to protect people, and its dangerous. And is that how you want them to remember Lucy?"

"I know that this is complicated." Denise starts. Michelle just gives her a look like _No shit, Sherlock._ "But she has _no where else to go._ It isn't permanent—"

"No where else? Denise, I have never asked for the details of your job. I don't want to know. But what I do know is that the FBI has safehouses and measures in place for things like this. If she can't go to one of those places, how safe is it to bring her into our house?" Michelle stops now, a car at a red light waiting for Denise to give her the green light. To tell her that she's not inviting danger into their home, with their children. Denise can't do it. She can only be a stop sign right now. She's ashamed. Ashamed that she can't help Lucy without endangering her family. Angry that there is no solution here where everyone wins.

"I have a FBI security unit on this, they'll be here all night—"

"The fact that they have to be is the problem! That you would even suggest doing this. To our home. To _us."_ Michelle hisses. Denise knows there will be hell to pay for this. Later. It always comes later.

"One night, Michelle. Please. Just a single night, just a bed to rest and then she's out tomorrow. Please." Denise is begging now, and Michelle is the only person she will resort to for that. No one else will ever get her to beg.

"Denise—" Lucy says. Her voice soft but steady. Denise has heard that resolve before, when Lucy is about to do the Lucy Preston thing and tell Denise it was okay. She'd find somewhere. Denise knows she'd rather sleep on a park bench on the coldest night in winter than come somewhere she's not welcome and endanger the people there.

"Lucy, honey, please stay out of this," a river of compassion with a hint of affection flows from Michelle's lips. "This is between me and my wife." Michelle's attention comes back to Denise. Hell to pay. But later. "One night, Denise. One."

"Thank you." Denise whispers. Hell to pay and plenty of groveling. "She needs to shower and get out of those clothes—"

"I'm going inside to make sure Mark and Olivia stay in their rooms. The rest is up to you." Denise feels the gaping black hole in front of her when Michelle stomps back inside the house. It's all her fault. Her fault that galaxies now separate her and the woman she adores. Or Garcia Flynn's. Or Rittenhouse's. Or both. Yeah, they are so going down.

* * *

A little thing called guilt is chewing its way through Lucy's stomach. Expect that it's not a little thing. And it's already gutted Lucy.

She hates that she's done this to people. Making Wyatt hold her because she couldn't keep it together. Making Jiya wipe the blood off her hands and face because she didn't even know it was there. Making Denise offer up her home and endanger her children.

God, she wants a drink. Numbness has to be better than this.

The last hour is a blur. She remembers snippets: Olivia's innocent voice and Michelle saying, "It's okay, honey. Just go back to sleep and stay in your room until Mommy says". The lukewarm spray of water sliding down her back. Denise telling her she took her clothes for evidence in Amy's case. And then suddenly she was in the guest room.

She won't get under the covers, despite the shivers dancing under her pale skin. It feels wrong. She's an invader. Not to mention that she just knows there are two FBI agents outside the door, there for her protection. They're unnecessary. And a gigantic risk.

Lucy knows, 100 percent, that whomever hurt Amy is not coming back for her. Not anytime soon. He'll give her time before making good on his threat. Not that Lucy will ever let that happen. Dead or behind bars. That's where she's going to put him. Somewhere he can never hurt her sister or anyone close to her again.

The security outside the door is far more dangerous to her than the man who almost killed Amy. Lucy's only hope is that if they take someone out, its only her and not any part of that whole, beautiful family down the hall.

The young woman grunts and curls up on her side. Her back aches from too long in that hospital seat. That pickaxe from earlier hasn't left her brain, but just her luck that her brain decided to kick into overdrive anyway. Now she has to deal with all her guilt and fear on top of this damn staggering headache. And the ache pulsing in her battered heart. Maybe her sleep will be dreamless tonight, as much of a reprieve as alcohol would be. Maybe it's time to let her heavy eyelids win. Just for a moment.

After all, she still has a terrorist to bring down.

* * *

Denise Christopher's day was shot to hell. Again. For the second day in a row. Very early in the morning.

When she woke up after about two hours of sleep (also for the second night in a row), she did not expect Lucy to be gone. Although, in retrospect, she should have.

This morning settled on her shoulders and tried to crush her. Whispering about the canyon she opened between herself and her wife and that if something had happened to her kids, it would have been all her fault.

Then she discovered Lucy was gone. Just the icing on the damn cake. Better yet, she had to listen to the bumbling of the FBI security agents still lurking about her house. Denise treasured telling them to get out of her house. Lucy wasn't here anymore and Denise surely didn't need them to protect her. Besides, she knew if she didn't, Michelle would have. She would not have their children seeing FBI agents around the house.

After her great morning, Denise makes it to work in record time, and then up to her office in another record. When she gets there, she finds exactly what she thought she would: Lucy Preston. Sometimes Denise sorely regretted giving the younger woman a key to her office.

"How much sleep did you actually get last night?" Denise demands, dropping her purse beside her desk, aiming her question inside her office's 'closet'.

"About as much as you did. Probably less." Lucy replies distractedly. Denise isn't close enough to get a good look at her, but she has the general idea of the wear she'll see. Her cheekbones will be sharper, her eyes haunted, and dark circles will be adorning the place under her eyes. She's wearing professional clothes and for a second Denise worries she went back to her house to fetch them. But she knows Lucy is smarter than that. It was probably an extra pair that she kept in her desk because if Lucy is anything, it's a klutz. The file Flynn left for her is open on the desk next to her Rittenhouse corkboard. The corkboard that only exists because of Garcia Flynn. Because before him, they had never even heard the name Rittenhouse. Which Denise hates. With a burning passion.

"Do you really think that's healthy?" Denise sounds like a disapproving mother now, but it's nothing Lucy isn't used to. Denise walks briskly over to Lucy, dropping two pills in her palm and handing her a bottle of water. Lucy obediently downs the medicine.

"Sleep comes later, after I catch Garcia Flynn." With the words _Garcia Flynn,_ Lucy rams a thumbtack through string connecting one piece of evidence to another. The force rattles the board, propelled by anger and pain and too many emotions. Denise has the urge to remind her to be gentle on the board because it is not actually Flynn's face. Somehow, she doesn't think Lucy will appreciate that.

"You really think Flynn did this?" Their war is now two-sided: Rittenhouse and Flynn. Two opposing sides and somehow, she and Lucy found themselves smack in the middle.

"Who else would it be?"

"The answer is right in front of your face." Denise deadpans. No tiptoeing, no teetering at the edge of the cliff or trying to slowly back away from an agitated wild animal.

Lucy scoffs, "All I know about Rittenhouse is the damn puzzle pieces Flynn has left for me. They would have no reason to… to… hurt Amy."

"I can't quite judge that," Denise snatches the folder from beside Lucy "and I think it's about time I got the full story."

* * *

Wyatt is well aware that no one wants to be in the shooting range this morning. He might have only had one day of training them for the field so far, but he already knows that Rufus would be more than happy to never enter this room again. His grip on his gun is too tense, too anxious.

Jiya, her face practically screams irritation at having to be here. She had been itching to get her hands on that computer and security system since yesterday. He knows she'd much rather be using her hands on a keyboard than a trigger.

But he has his orders and wishes they would stop complaining. Well, Rufus really. Jiya's face is simply set and she takes her shots without complaint, knowing that the sooner this is over, the sooner she gets to that computer.

He tries really hard too. They are all high-strung, all tired. So he tires really really hard not to snap at Rufus

He fails spectacularly. He actually finds himself wishing Lucy was here so that they could needle each other. To watch her challenge him with that insufferable know-it-all attitude, to see her face flush unexpectedly when she catches him watching her. This all only serves to remind him why he insists on working only with other field agents. Dear god, this day is going to be long.

* * *

"You still think it was Flynn? You said the man told you to find and kill Flynn. Why—"

"Reverse psychology," Lucy sits in the chair in front of Denise's desk. "think about it. This whole time we've been ahead of him. He always leaves something for me. _Always._ And it's always Rittenhouse. He obviously wants us to do something about it, to take them down. But we haven't. We've just kept chasing him. He decided that wasn't good enough and sent someone after me. By having them threaten me like that, he wants me to think its Rittenhouse so I go after them instead of him." On this issue, Lucy is insistent, immovable like concrete. Her insides are still twisted up and littered with holes from these past few days and the only reason that the stupid pickaxe in her brain let up is because Denise gave her pain medicine.

Her insides may be twisted, but her words aren't, this issue isn't. This was Garcia Flynn thinking he was smarter than her. This was Garcia Flynn getting impatient and thinking that he could force her hand. The joke was on Garcia Flynn. She's going to make him pay.

"Lucy," Denise's words are sharp, no real barbs and Lucy is sure this might be the fourth time she's tried to say her name. "that seems risky. Using this reverse psychology, there's too much room for error, for misinterpretation."

Lucy is beyond keeping her temper in check. Her hand comes down hard on the desk, the sharp sting of her hand not even registering on her current pain scale. "This. Was. Garcia. Flynn. I know it." Lucy shoves the chair back roughly. "So I am going to go work on this board. His plans are tied to Rittenhouse. I'm going to find out what they are and get there before he does." Lucy declares.

* * *

Jiya needs to get her hands on this computer. Now. She knows they are supposed to be taking their cues from Agent Christopher, but didn't she say that Jiya would get the computer after Forensics was done with it? She sighs heavily. These past few days, Jiya feels like someone tossed her in the washing machine and then put it on the highest setting possible. In all her time with the FBI, something like this has never happened.

Because she'd been safely tucked behind her computer, with code and algorithms as her constant companions, more than people had been. She'd always thought of the FBI as one big working machine, just with different moving parts. Now she knows that the departments are more like different worlds. And her little, sheltered tech world is already miles away. She doesn't know if she can ever go back after seeing what she has.

Wyatt's irritation and anxiety is a constant presence in the room. She can't really blame him, how is he supposed to protect two or three untrained agents in the field while also trying to take down Flynn? And Lucy. She's seen her sister on a gurney, rushed into the hospital. She's wiped the blood off of Lucy and seen her fall apart. Rufus. He's was a mere acquaintance when they were both techs. There's not much more between them now, but she's heard the slight tremor in his voice in the shooting range, when he imagines actually having to put a bullet through someone. She saw the determination on his face when they found the computer security system at the Preston house. How can she go back to hiding behind her computers after seeing all of this? All the destruction that the other side of the FBI endures?

Answer: she can't. Which feels exactly what she's doing. Trying to engineer better tech for whenever the team goes out again, but lord knows when that will be. She could be trying to get to that digital footprint right now and identify who almost killed Amy Preston. That's what she should be doing, and frankly she's sick of listening to people telling her to wait.

"I'm going down to Forensics to get that computer." Jiya announces suddenly, her voice cracking the silence with all the tact of a whip. Rufus looks up startled, and Wyatt looks unaffected by her outburst. Save for the smirk that pulls at his lips.

"What?" Rufus's brow crinkles.

"I'm going to Forensics to get that computer and trace that footprint." Jiya repeats.

"Great idea," Wyatt stand and strides over to her. "I'll come with you." The glint in his eye makes her wary. But as an agent that is used to constantly being thrown in the field, he probably has nothing better to do anyway. Besides, if Forensics gives her problems, a little extra muscle couldn't hurt. Not that she plans on physically throwing down with the Forensics department. Not really her style.

"No, no, no." Rufus shakes his head his quickly he starts blurring like a cartoon character. "Not a great idea. At all. Agent Christopher has not given us those orders. And we follow Agent Christopher's orders."

"Agent Christopher hasn't given us orders all morning." Wyatt rolls his eyes. "If anything, Agent Christopher would want us being productive, not doing useless things in here." Wyatt and Rufus had rubbed each other the wrong way in the shooting range earlier and Jiya can basically see the leftover tension.

"You know Agent Christopher probably wouldn't have a problem killing us, right?" Rufus asks frantically. "She'd be able to get away with it, too. She'd know where to dispose of our bodies, establish an alibi—"

"If she hasn't killed me yet, she's not going to." Wyatt cuts in. Then he's out the door and Jiya's left to scurry after him.

* * *

Wyatt's not afraid of locking horns with Agent Christopher. It's at least a weekly activity for him, quickly becoming a daily habit. So down to Forensics he goes. He has nothing better to do anyway. Sitting behind a desk and making up field training schedules is mindless, boring, and pretty useless. Everyone has general training until they need to become individualized sessions. He won't be able to develop individual schedules until he evaluates their current skill level and how far he can take them as a group. Besides, Wyatt's a man of action. Sitting behind a desk is not something he does well. Especially not when he can actually be doing something.

Finding Amy Preston's attacker is a worthy cause. The drive to finding the perpetrator gnaws at him and whispers in the back of his mind. It whispers that the only reason he wants it so bad is because of Jess. He couldn't find Jess's killer, and he's trying to atone by finding Amy's would-be killer. He really hates those voices in his head. The ones that urge him to find solace in a bottle or cradle Lucy on a hospital floor. He hasn't given up on finding Jessica's killer, so the voices are wrong. Plain and simple.

This line of thinking prompts him to push the elevator button harder than necessary. He's been doing everything harder than necessary today. Jiya doesn't say a word to Wyatt, a fact he is extremely grateful for. If it was Rufus in here with him, the man would still probably be rambling about what a bad idea this is and how Christopher will kill them.

The elevator door dings open. Wyatt steps out and the glass doors to the Forensics division open for him and Jiya. He walks in and spots a familiar face, a guy he knows from when he consulted for Delta Force Zero. Jerry. That's his name.

Jerry looks up as the doors open. The look in his eyes changes from normal to resigned in a spilt second, like he knows these next few minutes are going to be difficult for him, and Wyatt has the urge to laugh derisively. "Wyatt," he greets with a nod. "I know what you're here for—" he starts.

"Yeah, and I know that you'd be one of the people working on it. Where's the evidence from the Preston case?" he's impatient and they don't have time for this.

"It takes longer than one night and morning—" Jerry starts again, the frustration in his tone rising to match Wyatt's. An impressive feat if he ever saw one, but that's what he does to people.

"The computer," Jiya interrupts him this time. "that's all we need. The computer." Jerry's gaze falls on her for the first time, and his face is crinkled with confusion as if he didn't know she was there before that moment. "I'm Agent Jiya Marri." Jiya introduces when she sees the look on his face. She sticks her hand out to shake and Jerry takes it with a brisk introduction of his own. His eyes flick between the two of them, frustration warring with curiosity.

"Well?" Wyatt snaps in question when Jerry's silence continues too long for his liking.

"Look," Jerry says, his anger back in full force as it pushes out the curiosity. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his hand. "even if I wanted to, Agent Christopher has to sign off on it."

"Then call her office." Jiya demands. Jerry's shoulders shake with laughter at Jiya's demand.

"No, I will not be calling Agent Christopher." He says, mirth in his voice.

"Why not?" Wyatt growls, fighting the onset of desire to punch Jerry. Just once.

"She's up there with Agent Preston. I'm not getting in the way of that."

 _Wait, what?_ Wyatt's clenched fist relaxes as he and Jiya share a look of surprise. Lucy's here? Jerry picks up on their confusion.

"You guys didn't know? But, we're you guys assigned to some super-secret task force with her?" And with that comment, Wyatt wants to sock Jerry again. Maybe more than once. The look on Wyatt's face must convey this as Jerry's hands fly up defensively. "Look, all I know is what I've heard. Stuff travels fast. Especially… that kind of stuff. And especially when it's a Preston."

"What have you heard?" Jiya demands quickly.

"I heard that she came into work, really, really early. In pajamas, looking pretty much as you'd expect her to," Wyatt gives Jerry an unamused look, not in the mood to try and dissect whatever "as you'd expect her to" was. "Hell. It means she looked like hell. She went into the file room you guys have converted into your top-secret lair or whatever, and then up to Agent Christopher's office. Hasn't come down since and Agent Christopher's gone up. So yeah…not getting in the middle of that." Jerry concludes.

"Yeah, well. I need that computer, so I'm going to need you to." Jiya's voice is all steel and confidence, her olive arms crossed over her Twenty-one Pilots t-shirt (wasn't she wearing that yesterday?). Wyatt feels a wave of respect for this woman washing over him.

"What?"

Jiya steps closer to Jerry, as if it would help him hear her better when he understood her perfectly the first time around. "I came down here to get that computer and that is exactly what I intend to do. So you're going to call Agent Christopher." Wyatt just smirks in the background as Jerry squirms and reluctantly picks up the phone.

* * *

"You didn't tell me it was a dinosaur." Mason mutters, the sound of a keyboard clacking echoing through headquarters. Rufus sighs from his place next to Mason and Jiya is crunched close enough to see the screen on Mason's other side. They've been trying to trace the digital footprint for hours, with little to no avail. Jiya tried, he tried, and then they called Mason. When Mason entered the room and saw the actual computer, Rufus swears he was about to faint. "You'd think the former director of the CIA would have more advanced technology protecting her house." He mutters again.

"But that's the genius of it." Jiya interjects. She's been defending this system and its brilliance for all the hours they've had it. Rufus agrees with Mason. Well, he sees Jiya's point but he just wants a modern computer right now. Ergo, he agrees with Mason. "It's an outdated computer with a state-of-the-art modern security system. Do you know how many modifications and adjustments had to be made? It's perfect. A combination of new and old that only the owner could know how to navigate."

"Apparently not." Mason counters. "someone got in here, didn't they? She's not as clever as she thought she was, Carol Preston."

"Hacking into it and the firewall were actually pretty easy," Jiya says, ignoring Mason's earlier comment. "the security system part was modern enough that it was navigable to Rufus and I, someone familiar with new technology. But when we got it down to the footprint—"

"You started getting into the outdated part of the system, the part you didn't know." Mason finishes.

"That's why we called you." Rufus says, and Mason turns his head to give him a _well, duh_ look. A look which Rufus did not need today. His is already going bad enough, thank you very much. The only plus side was that apparently Agent Christopher is not going to kill them for the computer. She actually came down to Forensics to sign off on it going into Jiya's hands. According to Wyatt, she was only one notch more irritated, stern, and stoic than usual. So yay, there's that.

The sound of keys replaces their voice as they all watch Mason work, their eyes devouring the screen for a hint of a breakthrough. Mason works for twenty more minutes, seemingly just as unsuccessful as they were when Wyatt pipes up.

"Come on, one of you has to be able to crack that." When Rufus looks over, he's leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. His face is set in a stern expression and Rufus can't believe how much he resembles an A-grade jackass in this moment in time.

"You want to try it?" Rufus snaps.

Wyatt's eyes narrow (and seriously, why the hell did the dude have to have the most piercingly blue eyes that made glares a thousand times more noticeable and effective?). "No, but I think that our resident geniuses, who are here for reasons like this, would be about to figure it out." Wyatt bites rights back.

Rufus is opening his mouth to throw some scalding water back at the Delta Force Zero operative when Mason's resigned sigh and silent "bloody hell" captures his attention. "What?" Jiya jumps in before Rufus gets the chance.

"I work with, engineer, and design state of the state-of-the-art technology myself. Not whatever bloody ancient mess this is." Mason glares at the screen as if it was the computer's fault that Mason couldn't crack it.

"What about Anthony?" Jiya exclaims as she springs out of her seat, her voice simmering with excitement and booming around the room.

"Anthony?" Rufus stands up slowly, thinking about the white-haired man that had sent him to pick up the tacos on Taco Tuesday just last week. "Jiya! You're a genius! If anyone would know this outdated technology, it would be him!" Jiya absolutely beams with the praise and Rufus can't help the little, shy smile that creeps up onto his face. He's always been too nervous to approach Jiya, much less talk to her. But if that's the reaction he gets, he'll say things to her more often. But who is he kidding? He's Rufus, he'll be sticking his foot in his mouth or stammering like an idiot the next time he speaks to her.

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

 _Huh?_ And just like that, his and Jiya's bubble of hope is burst. "What? Why?" Jiya cries indignantly.

"Anthony's gone missing. He's went missing the first day you were with this team, three days ago." Mason confesses, looking down and shoving his hands in the pockets of his slacks.

"What?" Rufus asks, breathless, uncomprehending of the fact that somehow Anthony is _gone._ Uncomprehending that Anthony's been gone for three whole days and he's just finding out about it. "Why are we just finding out about this? Why weren't we told earlier? Anthony is my friend!"

"I know, I know!" Mason shouts, finally looking up into Rufus's devastated face. "Agent Christopher order me not to tell you."

"And for a good reason." Agent Christopher says, closing the door behind her although no one had heard or seen her enter. Except maybe Wyatt. The disconcerting click-clack sound of her heels trails behind her and she marches in their direction. She steps in front of Mason. "You've done enough here today, Agent Mason. You can head back to your science and technology division." Mason stands there a second longer, his face hardening as he and Christopher face off. Then, he sidesteps the woman and leaves the room. Christopher watches him the whole way out before turning back to them.

"We had a right to know." Rufus whispers. He doesn't feel afraid or intimidated by Agent Christopher right now. He just feels angry. An anger he is sure is justified. Anthony was more than just a co-worker. He was a friend. Rufus had met his wife and kids.

"I needed you focused and on-task, not worried about Agent Bruhl. I'm taking care of it." Agent Christopher says calmly.

"Taking care of it? How?" Rufus asks.

"Yes, I am taking care of it Agent Carlin and I'm not at the liberty to say how right now. We have a lot of problems on our plate right now, Anthony Bruhl being just one of them. Your job at the moment, both of you, is decrypting that footprint."

"Anthony was our way of decrypting the footprint." Jiya says her first words since Christopher entered the room, looking equal parts furious and sullen.

"Well, you're going to have to figure out how to do that without him here. I chose you two for a reason, show we what that was." And with that she's marching back towards the door.

"Wait!" Jiya calls and Agent Christopher pauses. "What did you come down for?"

"To check the progress on that footprint. So get it done." The next sound is the opening and closing of the door as their commanding officer departs.

"What did I tell you?" Wyatt crows with that stupid smirk back on his lips. "She won't kill you, she'll just make your life hell. That's one difficult woman." And he laughs.

* * *

Lucy's world had shrunk to the size of this corkboard in this tiny closet. Every single phone call Denise has made or received all day has been background noise. Lunch became a secondary thought. The need for sleep and acknowledgement of pain, mental and physical, was shoved aside and deemed as unnecessary.

There has to be something here. There has to be. Flynn's been dropping her all these Rittenhouse clues, dangling yarn, playing a game of cat and mouse. There's a reason.

He's trying to do something. To reveal this corrupt cabal organization. But why? She told Denise it was so that they would take them down. But she knows that's only one part of it. It's a puzzle and Lucy is either seeing only the big picture or the little picture. The biggest problem is that she doesn't know which one she's seeing.

Apprehension overwhelms Lucy and creeps under her skin. She's on the cusp of something, right on the edge and about to nosedive over. But she's missing it. What is it? _Come on, come on, come on, just think. Just think. Figure it out._

Rittenhouse. Garcia's Flynn's biggest enemy. The people he wants to wipe out.

Lucy Preston. Her. The analyst that flagged Garcia Flynn as a terrorist, who endlessly dedicated herself to studying him inside and out. The woman who thinks she knows him and can eventually bring him down. The little government agent he toys with.

But it's more than that. Lucy feels it in her blood, in her gut instinct. It's more than a game. He wants something _from_ her. But what?

There has to be something here. Something that connects to all of it: Rittenhouse, him, and herself. _Come on, come on, come on._

It's here. Right in front of her face. So she looks. She looks at what's right in front of her face.

An airplane. No. Not a normal airplane. Which airport is that? There's something. Something just at the back of her mind, vying for recognition and remembrance. What is—

 _No._ Ice douses Lucy as her eyes widen. Her eyes flick over the board and find every face she's afraid she would. She knows what his plans are. She knows where he's going to be. She has to stop him.

"Agent Christopher." Lucy croaks, stunned. She doesn't hear. "Agent Christopher." Lucy croaks only slightly louder, but it somehow does the trick.

"What?" she asks on high alert, suddenly right next to Lucy.

"I know." Lucy whispers, eyes stuck to the board. "I know what Garcia Flynn is planning. I know where and when Garcia Flynn is going to be. And I know that we have to stop it."

* * *

 **Thank you guys for reading! And for everyone that has stuck with this story through my crazy, inconsistent updates!**

 **A few notes on the chapter. I realize that in the previous chapters, I refer to Agent Christopher as Agent Christopher when it's other people's point of view. I kind of started referring to her as Denise from Lucy's point of view to show how close the two women were, but I think it might have bled into other places.**

 **Please tell me if anyone seems out of character and what you think. I also apologize for the lack of Wyatt and Lucy interactions in this chapter. They are coming next chapter, but I know our dear Lyatt hearts are suffering right now.**

 **A few quick shout outs because my author's note was already so long without including them:**

 **A thank you to TheVelvetDusk as always (I know I mentioned in above, but she deserves to get mentioned twice).**

 **Thanks to Gracielinn as well, your review definitely made me smile and you write some great Timeless stories!**

 **And then thanks to Shelly, Katy, and Cindybaby whose short and sweet reviews also made my day.**

 **All in all, reviews give me life, so please review!**

 **The season finale is tomorrow! I can't wait! Am I ready for this? Probably not. And NBC better renew Timeless because I swear to god it is the best tv show on television right now. It is so brilliant and lovely and deserves so, so many seasons. It just keeps getting better and better.**


	5. Trainwreck Mission 01

**Oh my gosh, did she update within the same month? Yes, she did and she's very proud of herself. Especially since this is her longest chapter, 29 pages in Word. (the last chapter was around 7K words, this one is 17K. O o O)**

 **First off, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has read this fic and shown me support. Especially TheVelvetDusk, Emily Simpson, Katiejhawk, and Gracielinn. Thanks for showing me your thoughts and support through your reviews! Summer is coming soon (only one more week of school left), and I am going to be working really hard to write more. Hopefully, I'll be able to get this updated more often.**

 **The last time I updated, it was before the season 2 finale. Which, oh my god. NBC needs to renew Timeless already. I need some hot, future Lyatt, some healing for the present Lucy and Wyatt, and some getting Rufus back. Although, I am not complaining about the deleted scenes we've been getting.**

 **Did everyone see the pool scene? It was the best thing ever! Like everyone else, I assumed Lucy was a klutz and fell into the pool, but no. Wyatt's just a huge, lovesick dork who jumped in while holding her bridal style. And then they just made out for like 2 minutes (at least it felt that way). They were just so happy and I need my happy babies back. And then that tender scene from 2x01 where he tucks her in and gives her a sweet, little forehead kiss. I'm dead.**

 **I have to chant "I trust the Timeless writers" like a mantra in my head now. They haven't led us astray yet. Except for one or two moments. I'm sure you guys know what they are. They need to fix this Jessica and the baby situation. Which, I don't completely believe, because math.**

 **Anyway, I need a season 3 and NBC needs to give it one.**

 **I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! As always, I don't own Timeless and all stupid (and non-stupid) mistakes are my own. Please enjoy much more Lyatt in this chapter to make up for the last one.**

* * *

"Him, him, him," Lucy's reaching across the board, her fingernails scrabbling to grasp the pictures. "Inventors, politicians, heads of fortune 500 companies, there are even going to be ambassadors on this flight." Lucy shoves the headshots into Denise's hands. "Killing them would be a blow to some of America's biggest companies, to the economy. And international relations? It'll be a nightmare. Not to mention the effect these men's deaths would have on politics _in_ the country." Lucy's going top speed, zooming down the highway.

"Where?" Denise flips through the photos.

"Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey. A private flight, taking all of them to some sort of international summit or meeting." Lucy rattles off.

"When does the flight leave?"

"Early morning, one day from now."

"Good." Denise says, handing the photos back to Lucy. "It's going to take us one day to get there. Go tell the team to get everything they need together as soon as possible, and get prepped yourself. I need to make some calls." With that, Denise is marching off to a verbal war. Lucy stands there, stricken, for a few seconds as the orders sink in. She did it. She pinpointed where Garcia Flynn would be before he got there. _She_ was going to be there. This was it. The moment they'd come face to face. And he'd be carted off to a hellhole for what he did to her baby sister.

Then the shock wore off, and it was like Lucy became the Flash, how fast she hightailed it out off there. The pictures fluttered the floor, forgotten in her haste.

She swung out of Denise's office, clamoring down the stairs. What a scene she was probably making. She knew how she looked: tired, hallow, sunken. She also knew how fast gossip spread. Faster than a wildfire. Everyone knew what happened to her sister. How must she look right now? The grieving, half-deranged FBI analyst plunging down the stairs? She might have cared. Before. But now she has a location on Garcia Flynn, so screw appearances.

Her foot catches on a stair, and she desperately grabs at the rail to catch herself. She doesn't let it slow her down and keeps on flying down the stairs.

As it turns out, Lucy Preston is so clumsy that tripping on one stair isn't enough.

So down she goes.

The stair is just a few from the flat ground, and her momentum takes her so quickly that she has no hope of grasping onto the railing now. Her world blurs as everything seems to rush up at her so, so quickly—

Oof. Nothing. That hurt a lot less than she thought it would. Maybe she's reached her threshold for pain and now she's numb to any more of it. But why is everything so dark? Her brain is running sluggishly after her discovery, and it take her a few moments to open her eyes.

Wyatt Logan. She's didn't hit the floor at all. Instead, she fell straight into the arms of Wyatt Logan. Well, not quite straight into his arms. She's at an odd angle, her body supported by part of his side until she runs out of Wyatt and is dangling into open air. His arms are wound around her; one partially around her waist, bunching up the fabric of her shirt in the back. The other is looped under her armpit and reaching across her upper back. It's an incredibly awkward position to be in, especially with him of all people. When her open eyes fly to his, those infuriating blue ones are already on her. They're equal parts shocked, annoyed, and amused.

Well, she wasn't exactly planning on him having to catch her either.

And she needs to extricate herself from his arms. Right now.

She moves too quickly, teetering further off balance and almost landing on the very ground he saved her from. But his reflexes are quick. His arms tighten around her and he heaves her body weight until she's upright. An inch away from his chin.

"Whoa there, ma'am." He rumbles, more amusement than annoyance shining through his voice. His hands are still on her upper arms. Why are they still there? Why does she care?

"Don't call me ma'am." Lucy says. But it's halfhearted, without its usual force, and from this proximity, she has to tilt her head at an incredibly far angle to get a clear look at his face. That smirk. Of course he's wearing that smirk.

The air is charged, laden with that electricity she and Wyatt somehow picked up when she crashed into him during their first meeting. "What are you doing bumbling down the stairs and making such a racket?" he asks. The smirk remains on his face, but his eyes melt into something resembling concern.

Airport. Flynn. Moving, ASAP.

Lucy hurriedly takes a step back, searching for distance between her and Mr. Smirk-a-lot.

It backfires. She's much closer to the bottom of the steps than she expected, and almost topples in reverse up the stairs. The complete opposite of what she wanted to happen, happens. Wyatt reaches out again and ensnares her in his arms, saving her from herself. The sudden change in direction makes her stumble toward him, her hands landing on her chest. His chest vibrates as he chuckles. Lucy flushes, feeling silly for falling into him twice in one day.

She's right back where she started. Tilting her head back, she meets his mirthful eyes. Then she pushes on his chest, trying to get him to step backward. "We need to move." Lucy says.

All the mirth vanishes from Wyatt's eyes, so quick that Lucy has to wonder if it was ever there. As quick as the flick of a switch. He nods his head, serious. She reminds her of a solider at this moment. His face set like he's about to be deployed to fight some far-off war. She guesses that's not entirely wrong. Although the war they're about to fight is far closer to home.

* * *

The headquarters is a flurry of unorganized rushing as everyone scrambles to prepare for a straight flight to the east coast. Lucy burst into the room, her voice ringing our orders to grab whatever was needed for a covert mission to New Jersey. An airport in New Jersey to be exact. She glossed over most of the details, intent on getting herself ready. Now, they were left with tidbits of information. Airport, important people, an attack on the private airplane of these important people. Most likely a bomb. That part was Wyatt's guess because that's the easiest way to eliminate a large amount of people. Just blow'em to Hell.

After finishing her short, breathy explanation, the room exploded into action. Rufus and Jiya shoving tech into bags, shutting down computers and other equipment. Lucy starts shoving file folders into her back, standard-issue backpack. Wyatt doesn't have much. His gun, clips, bulletproof vest, and other standard equipment. Things he's had to pack a thousand times when he was a member of Delta Force Zero. He's efficient, quick, and done before anyone else.

Jiya and Rufus are still entangling tech, sorting it, deciding what is needed and what's not. Lucy, on the other hand, has hastily thrown the sheet over her corkboards half-off of it. She scans the board, looking for anything that could help. Wyatt shakes his head to himself. She's good. She's already found out one of Garcia Flynn's plans along with the where and when. It's not going to get much better than that.

Wyatt strides over to her desk, folding her bulletproof vest and shoving it in her bag. If there's one thing she's not forgetting, it's that vest. He has no desire to see filled with bullet holes. Her or Rufus. His eyes go over to the techs and he sees both seemed to have finally gotten all their tech sorted and are packing their vests. Even Jiya. Good.

"What are you doing?" Lucy asks him, arms crossed over her chest. She sounds more like the bossy woman he first met, more like herself. But her appearance contradicts him. She looks completely dead on her feet. How the hell is she supposed to stop Flynn in this state? She is so going to be sleeping on that plane.

"Helping you pack." Wyatt replies smoothly. "Don't forget your gun." He reminds her. He leans in close to her and then around to open her desk drawer. Her breath catches. Just barely, but it's there. A smirk tugs at his lips. Cool metal. His hand closes around the firearm and dangles it in front of the brunette. She snatches it from his hand, giving him a withering look. Her body's response to him is not his fault. His smirk widens. She walks past him to her bag, her shoulder jostling his as she goes.

"Let's get moving people!" Denise shouts, pushing her way into the room. "Now."

* * *

Wyatt sits across from Lucy for takeoff. He doesn't trust her to take care of herself in her current state. When the woman buckles herself in, he leans over, checking the straps and pulling them right to secure her to her seat. "You are aware that I can buckle myself into a seat, right?" she asks.

"Maybe I just got a thing with you and buckles." Wyatt answers cheekily, leaning back and strapping himself in. The plane is nice. Roomy, supplies of food and drink, and even a few bedrooms for agents to refuel before a mission. Lucy needs every one of these.

After a bumpy takeoff, Wyatt clicks himself out of his seat and heads to where he knows the food is stored. Options aren't great, still technically airplane food, but it is food. He grabs some and takes it out to Lucy. "Here." He says, crouching to her still-seated level and handing her the food. Christopher's eyes create pinpricks on his back as she watches him warily.

The analyst's brow crinkles as she looks down in the food Wyatt placed in her lap. "What is this?"

"Food." Lucy's responding face is very unamused. "Just eat it." Wyatt encourages. "I know you haven't eaten much in the past few days, so just do yourself a favor and eat it. And after that, I expect you to head back to the bed and get some sleep. This flight is about ten hours after all."

"You expect me to?" Lucy's voice climbs in pitch. "Listen—"

Wyatt grimaces at his choice of words and cuts her off. He should have expected her response. A headstrong, independent woman. But he needs to make a point and he needs her to listen. "If you want to be a part of this mission, yes. I expect you to eat and sleep. Lucy, I get it. Amy…. It took a toll on you. But letting you out into the field in your current condition is dangerous and I won't do it. Christopher put me on this team to keep you and Rufus safe. If I allow you into the field as you are now, I'm already failing that job. So, eat and sleep. Then you'll be good to go." His voice gets softer the longer he talks to her. He notices the exhaustion and wear creeping up on her like the sun peeking over the horizon.

"Okay." She whispers, eyes downcast.

"And one more thing," Wyatt says. Lucy glances up just in time to see Wyatt's trademark smirk take over his face. "No more skipping morning training." The result of his words is refreshing and rewarding, her mouth pulling into her own little smirk.

* * *

"Are we calling in reinforcements? I mean, terrorist attacks on airports are big. Right? Like really big? As in 200—" Saying Rufus is nervous is like saying that a fall from the Grand Canyon will only give you a scratch. In other words, Rufus is sure his anxiety is so palpable that it congealed into a physical force and can now be listed as the 8th wonder of the world.

"Agent Carlin, there's no need to worry. I called the airport before we left. They are aware of the situation." Christopher reassures.

Rufus is not reassured. Bounce, bounce, bounce, goes his leg. The nervous energy has to go somewhere. Agent Christopher's phone starts ringing before Rufus can ask his thousandth question and she excuses herself to go answer it. Rufus suspects that she's so tired of answering his questions that she's actually relieved to be fielding another call. He thinks that might be a bit of a new low.

All alone, he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. The recorder tucked deep into his pants pocket feels more like a burning poker. Connor had tracked him down before leaving; shoving it into his hand, clapping him on the shoulder, giving him stern orders to be careful, and then leaving. The recorder makes him feel sick. He already used it on them twice. The first time wasn't awful, but the second… the second was Lucy's sister's crime scene. It felt like a direct violation of the ambitious analyst herself. How was he going to be friends with her, teammates, knowing what he had done? How could he laugh and smile with her, knowing he broke her trust before she ever gave it to her? It was eating him alive like a giant bloodthirsty worm.

Dark, dark eyes take in his surroundings. Lucy went into one of the bedrooms about an hour ago and hasn't come out. Not that he blames her. Girl looked like she'd turn into the walking dead if she took one more hit. Wyatt is slumped in his seat, eyes closed, and feet propped up on the seat in front of him. Is he asleep? Does he know that there's another bedroom? Or is he just too ruff and tuff for that. And yes, Rufus is still holding a bit of a grudge at Wyatt's gruff, snapping attitude.

And then there's Jiya. She's sitting in the section across from him. The sunlight coming through an airplane window is supposed to be bothersome and too bright, but somehow it manages to highlight Jiya's features, creating a beautiful shining symphony. Which might be a bit of a creepy observation. All he means is that Jiya's a beautiful woman. No creepy intent aimed at her. Her one leg is tucked up under herself and she's grossed with a tablet on her lap, earphones making her dead to the outside world. Star Trek probably. A fond smile makes its way onto his face.

Well, time wasn't going any slower. Might as well take a cue from Jiya and enjoy some Star Wars before he faces possible death. Which, let it be stated for the record, he is not looking forward to.

* * *

Jiya had been trying to distract herself for the whole plane ride. Some good old Star Trek did the trick, taking her off to the world she loved. But now they were stepping off the plane, and ironically, Jiya's first thought is that she wishes she brought a coat. Jiya steps down onto the pavement, her black, FBI backpack straps biting into her arms. She turns her head, just as Rufus steps down next to her. He emanates nervousness like radio waves. Lucy comes next. She slept the entire ride, and still looks slightly groggy. Wyatt's hand hovers a few inches from her lower back, as if he wants to help guide her but is unsure if he should. A very, very genuine, maybe inappropriate, question pops into her head: How can people who met—What? Two or three days ago?—have that much sexual tension between them?

Agent Christopher steps off the plane last. The breeze seems to blow around her that way it does to superheroes in the movies, making her look simply more. More official, more important, more boss lady chic. It just serves to blow Jiya's hair around her in a tornado formation. "Come on!" Christopher shouts over the noise of airplane engines. They all fall into line like ducklings to follow her. Well, Jiya wishes they did. Instead, they make an amorphous blob, oozing along behind Agent Christopher.

One would think that after about 10 hours of sitting in a plane and getting a numb butt, walking would be great. Maybe it would be if Jiya could think of anything other than every step she took was one step closer to the terrorist Garcia Flynn and potential death by said terrorist. Don't get her wrong, she wanted to catch Flynn. She just had to admit that catching the man who evaded some of their best teams of highly trained and experienced field agents didn't seem likely with the ragtag group they had.

They barely know each other. She knew things from office gossip, but not much else. Rufus is anxious about the whole taskforce, not exactly going out of his way to solidify bonds with his teammates. Even though Wyatt and Lucy have enough sexual tension between them to fill the Colosseum, she'd seen that spark light into snapping, explosive arguments. And Jiya….Jiya is behind the scenes. She is the voice in their ear. She doesn't know what purpose she really serves other than that. A nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach tells her she would be finding out real soon.

She hates the fact that the nagging feeling in her gut is right.

Christopher comes to a stop outside of a nondescript black van. Nondescript unless you're FBI. Or CIA. Or police. Or watch any sort of crime show. Christopher knocks on the van door, and it slides open to reveal a petite redheaded woman. "Agent Denise Christopher? FBI from California?" she asks. Christopher nods the affirmative and fills her badge open as proof. The agent nods and tosses the keys out of the van. Christopher catches them with ease and an unflinching face. The woman clamors out of the van agilely. "When you're finished here, just call the head of this branch and we'll be sent out to retrieve the van." Christopher just nods again.

Jiya expects the woman to leave, because she made it sound like that was her intention, but she doesn't. She stands there for a few more seconds. No one makes a sound, the air crackling with apprehension for what is fast approaching. After a few more than awkward seconds, the New Jersey agent scoffs and chuckles, crossing her arms. "I've got no idea what all of you are doing out here. Driving this van out here to leave with an Agent Christopher must be vaguest orders I've ever been given. Wasn't told when to pick it up again, what was going on, to provide backup." Her shoulders go up and down in imitation of a shrug. "And you're from the complete opposite coast. Just can't figure it out. Why the agents from this state aren't handling…whatever is going on. Or at least providing backup."

"Orders are orders." Agent Christopher responds firmly. "That's all I know." The other agent nods her head and walks away, heading toward a black sedan parked in front of the van. Jiya didn't even see it until now.

Jiya feels the energy Rufus emits, all full of trembling atoms, just waiting to unload some sort of question or incredulous remark. It's energy that a fraction away from breaking the dam of silence. However, he seems smart enough to wait until the other agents' car is pulling away. Just barely. "No backup? They're FBI! And this is the confirmed site of a likely terrorist attack?" Rufus's face is a portrait of utter disbelief, and Jiya can't blame him.

"I informed you that the members of this task force would be solely responsible for catching Garcia Flynn." Jiya wants to shake Agent Christopher at this point. She's not even facing them, the wind partially stealing her voice. Wyatt is the only fully-trained and experience field agent among them. How the hell were they supposed to do this? Her throat dried up into a desert landscape, her gulp scraping roughly against the sand dunes.

"Yeah, but we thought we'd actually have time to learn how to be G.I. Joe kickass before getting thrown to the wolves!" Rufus exclaims, throwing his arms up. His hands link and rest on the back of his head. His breathing becomes rhythmic; in and out, in and out. Jiya chances a glance over at Lucy and Wyatt. Wyatt is an ice sculpture, his jaw clenched and sharp. Lucy's eyes are on Rufus and she looks paler than usual, Rufus's panic seeming partially contagious.

"Agent Marri!" Agent Christopher's voice snaps Jiya's attention back to her commanding officer. Before Rufus's panic can start sinking into her. "This surveillance van is where you and I will be. We'll both be on comms and you'll have satellite imaging. Heat signatures, anything to help out the team. Understood?" Agent Christopher's eyes are as dark and steadfast as the earth beneath their feet. Yes, she understands. She's an FBI agent. Time to go to work.

* * *

Lucy feels better than she has since Amy. Physically at least. Sleep and food and no headache. But now her stomach is churning, nervous energy and determination mixing to make some poor form of cake batter that her body is rejecting. Night's upon them, only a few more hours until the plane takes off. Only a few hours to thwart a terrorist attack. Denise, Jiya, Rufus, Wyatt, and herself pile into the van and drive to the airstrip where the private plane is parked.

Once there, Denise opens to door away from the plane's sight. Lucy knows what she's thinking. What she's scared off. This was planned in advance. Who knows how many of Garcia Flynn's men are crawling around here?

Rufus hops out first, Lucy goes to climb out next, her foot nearly missing the edge of the car before she catches herself, and then Wyatt. They get to work. Jiya rustles around for the comms and flits around to fit them in everyone's ears. Wyatt has his vest on in record time, loading the clip of two handguns and holstering them. His muscles are wound, and he tries to hide it, but she can tell it's because he's worried. Worried about her and Rufus going up against a terrorist with zero training. Not exactly a bad thing to be worried about, considering that she's probably two inhales away from a panic attack.

She's too caught up in her active mind that Wyatt's newfound closeness doesn't register at first. Neither does the vest he has in his hand. She blinks owlishly up at him when she finally notices him there. He gives no verbal reply, just hands her the vest. Lucy throws it on and Wyatt gives her no time to even try securing the thing herself. Maybe it gives him ease of mind to be know that he did it himself, that at least her vest won't fail her.

He is quiet, gruff, and brisk, with an insanely clenched jaw and the intensity in his eyes has rocketed up past its normal amount. But his hands are gentle when he tightens her straps. Lucy feels the forced softness in his hands as they brush against her skin. _Clip, strap, pull._ When he's done, Lucy wants to grab his hand to stop him from going, to calm him down. To have him help calm her down. But she can sense that this is different from the first time he strapped her in. There's no eye contact tethering them to each other, like strings on the same tapestry. There's no lingering when he's done or questions in either of their gazes.

He might be avoiding looking at her, but she isn't going to stop looking at him. It gives her something to focus on. He goes to stand beside the still-open van door, standing with his feet shoulder width apart and hands folded in front of him. A soldier. He looks like one more than ever now.

Jiya bounces up next to her. She situates the comm in Lucy's ear, directing her on how using it, emphasizing the importance of keeping the line open. Lucy rolls her eyes. That was one time, on an intelligence gathering mission. No way she's turning her comm off if there's chance of a real firefight. Soon, Jiya is leaving her behind to go and set up Wyatt's comm.

Lucy scrapes her hair into a ponytail away from her face and takes a deep breath. For Amy. It's all for Amy.

* * *

Christopher gives them her orders. Disrupt as little as possible, find exactly what Flynn's planning and stop it. Those are Rufus and Lucy's orders. His are to eliminate anyone affiliated with Garcia Flynn, anyone aiding in this act of terror. If he sees Flynn, his orders are to bring him in. But if he can't, if not taking the shot ends in more lives lost, he's to end the bastard once and for all.

It creeps slowly along his veins, like a toxin. That familiar carelessness that has accompanied every mission since Jessica's death. The smothering of guilt and anger that fuels his need to make sure everyone short of himself survives the mission.

They have their orders and they need to move. His hand curls around his handgun, prepped and ready for any resistance. "Put that away, Wyatt!" Lucy hisses, her eyes on the gun, aghast. Is she joking? This isn't there little info gathering mission. This is a real mission with very real lives at stake. "We are going to talk to the pilot of the plane, see if they know anything." Okay, fine, they're going to talk to the pilot. He'll keep his gun out until they get there. "Wyatt!" Lucy hisses angrily again.

Wyatt ignores her and creeps out from the behind the van instead. The lights along the landing strip are the only source of light, barely illuminating anything. It's better than having lights ringed around the place, too exposed. All he has to worry about is keeping Lucy and Rufus with him. Blue eyes scan the area, for threats or anything amiss.

He should have known better to think that Lucy and Rufus could really be surefooted and stealthy. Lucy fell into his arms down the stairs, he thinks he had to catch her about a grand total of three times in that particular instance, and then she almost fell exiting their surveillance van. Rufus, well if he wasn't bumbling around, his whining would sure get them spotted.

"Wyatt, man, maybe you should listen to her? Gun away. Violence as a last resort?" Rufus suggests.

"Which one of us has field experience?" Wyatt snaps.

The faint crackle of static is the only forewarning the team has before Christopher comes over the comms. "Stop arguing like children and do your jobs."

"Wyatt, the gun." Lucy insists.

Good lord, this woman was bossy. "It'll go away when we get to the pilot." Wyatt grits out from between his teeth. She's not satisfied. He can tell. But if both try to wait each other out, they won't get anything accomplished.

The FBI emblazoned in the top corner of their vests is practically a neon sign to any of Flynn's men. It begs for the enemy to open fire. Somehow, this was the least conspicuous vest they had. Agent Christopher assured them that she called to the airport ahead of time, but this something like this was meticulously planned. Wyatt's wary.

He spots airport security and workers while he, Lucy, and Rufus are making their way to the plane. No one gives them any trouble, but Wyatt's uneasy feeling persists. There's far more security than is normal. "Something isn't right." Wyatt whispers.

"This plane is going to carry men that are imperative to the economy and politics. Plus, Christopher warned the airport of a potential threat. There's going to be more security than what you'd expect." Lucy says. It's a logical explanation. But it feels like it's set up too perfectly, too logical. "Now holster that thing before we board."

Wyatt's jaw snaps and his teeth grind. He grudgingly listens. Only because he doubts these guys at the bottom of the entrance of the plane will let him board will his gun at the ready. They meet no resistance from the men at the entrance, and Lucy hurries to be the first one through. Probably thinking she'll be the most diplomatic of them all. Wyatt nudges Rufus in front of him, putting himself in the back.

"Pilot's name?" Lucy asks into the comms.

"Um… give me a sec." Jiya responds, the faint clacking of keys heard from over the line. "Kathryn Eugenia Drummm. Three ms in the last name." Wyatt, Lucy, and Rufus keep climbing into the plane. A really plush plane. Ornate. The FBI's wasn't bad itself, but this was a whole new level. Guess this is what wealth amounts to. They get closer to the cockpit, the door sealed.

Lucy gets there first and knocks. The door to the cockpit creaks open. He imagines the pilot is expecting something like their copilot or an engineer. They'll be surprised to see three FBI agents instead. "Miss Drummm?" Lucy inquires when the door opens.

All the air leaves Wyatt in a rush. Is that… the pilot? Her hair is braided away from her face and hangs down her back. Her roots are a dark brown, but most of her hair is a buttery blond. Her eyes are a stunning shade of blue and her skin is the perfect mix between olive and alabaster. Her lips are painted a soft red, subtlety drawing the eye. Those lipstick lips are quirked in a smile, all confidence. She holds herself like a woman who knows her worth and is willing to shove any man who tries to deny her out the way.

They aren't identical. Especially not the eyes. But her demeanor is spot on. He doesn't see Kathryn Drummm in front of him. He sees the ghost of his wife.

* * *

Kathryn Drummm has a problem with them. Or at least with believing that there could be some sort of threat that's been unaccounted for.

And Wyatt has a problem with Kathryn Drummm. Rufus can't tell if his eyes softened at the sight of her, or if it's just the pilot reflected in those eyes. His mouth is partially open, with a look of such shock and longing on his face that Rufus feels as if Wyatt's having a private moment and he's intruding.

They totally don't have time for this. But he won't be the one to tell Wyatt that. No siree. Wyatt had been snapping at Rufus before the mission, and he really doesn't want to find out if Wyatt would actually punch him. At this point, he'd say it's likely. But yet again, he doesn't know Wyatt very well.

Or Lucy. Oh god, he's in a life or death situation with people he barely knows. With a guy whose default mode is jackass and a woman who may or may not be stable cause she's been through the real ringer in these past few days.

Why out of all the tech in the department did Denise Christopher have to choose him?

"I'm sorry," Kathryn Drummm says, pursing her lips at them, unimpressed. "but to my knowledge, this airport, especially this runway and jet, is as safe as can be. Security measures had been planned months in advance. I can't help you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to prepare for flight."

"Wait, Miss Drummm!" Lucy's hand slips between her bulletproof vest, coming back out with a picture. "Have you seen this man?" she asks, as Kathryn turns around. Did Lucy always carry around a picture of Garcia Flynn? Rufus wouldn't be surprised.

Kathryn raises her eyebrows. "Have I a terrorist walking around the airstrip?" she asks incredulously. "No, Agent Preston." Rufus is surprised that Kathryn would know enough to recognize Garcia Flynn by a picture. He bets that most people would vaguely know his name, but not his face. Garcia Flynn got the biggest airtime when he killed his wife and child and abandoned the NSA. Since then, his attacks had been sparse and on a small scale. One of the biggest threats he posed was holding valuable NSA information, hence why he was at the top of the Most Wanted List. That, and the fact that he is a completely unstable psycho. Proved by the fact that he moved from small scale attacks to airport terrorism.

Rufus might be surprised at Kathryn's knowledge, but he is not surprised when Lucy gets a face full of door shut in her face. He hears her sigh. "What now?" Rufus asks. Lucy turns around. Her features are tight, as if being stretched further and further across her face.

"He wants to take out everyone on this plane. The fastest, most efficient way to do that without losing any of his men is a bomb." Lucy admits.

A bomb. There goes Rufus's stomach. Perhaps his sanity too. A freaking bomb.

He glances over at Wyatt, hoping the man will say something so that Rufus doesn't have to and reveal the tremor in his voice. Wyatt will be no help right now. Still staring at the door Kathryn went through. Great. Wasn't Wyatt supposed to be the experienced one? Instead he was pining after a pretty face. Fan-freaking-tastic

"Alright," Rufus says, trying and failing to project an even, calm voice. "Let's assume it _is_ a bomb. Airports have a boatload of security measures, it's like trying to sneak candy into a movie theater. Actually, never mind, that's really easy to do." Rufus catches sight of Lucy's face, blatantly telling him that he is rambling and to get to the point. "How would Flynn be able to plant a bomb with all these safety procedures?"

"I… I don't know. Maybe—" Her dark eyes go wide. There's the lightbulb. Yes, Rufus wants to punch his fist in the air. She' s got something. "Months. She said security measures were planned for months." Then she's a whirlwind, pushing through Wyatt and past Rufus to dash off the plane.

"Where is she going?" Wyatt exclaims, voice drenched in exasperation. Point one for hurricane Lucy, jolting Wyatt out of his weird staring contest with the now-closed cockpit door. Actually, Lucy has more than one point when it comes to Wyatt Logan. Rufus doesn't have any clue how to answer Wyatt's question, but Wyatt isn't in the mood for an answer. He dodges around Rufus, his gun back in his hand. Rufus can't say with certainty that the gun isn't glued to the agent's hand.

It takes Rufus far too long to get moving, to realize that the only people he's got, his only protection, is no longer with him. His feet fly down the plane, and the steps. The lighting change from inside the well-lit plane to the mostly dark airstrip temporarily blinds him as he tries to adjust.

His sight might have taken a temporary vacation, but his hearing didn't. The tail end of a sentence floats over to him, "…a long time to have a conversation with you." It's ominous and he _knows_ it's not Wyatt or Lucy's voice. He charges blindly toward the voice.

His vision comes back as he's running, and he sees the blurry picture that goes along with the ominous voice, backlight from the lights that surround the plane and line the runway for takeoff. A man, with airport security typed across his shirt, has Lucy backed against the plane, a hand over her mouth. Wyatt is feet ahead of him, arms and legs pumping to reach the female member of their team.

Wyatt barrels into the man, knocking him away from Lucy. He punches the man twice in the gut, and the guy falls to the ground. "Take me to Flynn!" Wyatt demands, gun out and finger on the trigger. Flynn? Here? Rufus is missing something. He doesn't have time to ponder it because the man is back on his feet and steps toward Wyatt.

Wyatt has zero hesitation. None. Zilch. Four bullets enter the man's chest and he falls back onto the pavement with a heavy thud.

The shock of those bullets reverberates through Rufus and he bumbles to a stop, almost hitting the ground himself. His stunned eyes find Lucy's, equally frozen. She looks tiny and pale against the backdrop of the plane.

They hardly get a moment to digest what just happened, the death that just occurred in front of their faces. Airport security officers surround them, guns pointed at them and Rufus has no doubt that the safety is flipped to "off". Rufus's hands find themselves in the air without resistance.

"Wait!" Lucy's palms are up, placating and indicating no threat. "We're FBI." She states. Rufus wants to facepalm. She's going to have to do better than that, considering they just shot someone labeled as security.

Christopher. Agent Christopher can diffuse this situation. It only now hits him how oddly silent she and Jiya have been. If anything, she should have heard the gunshots and been demanding an update from their ear.

"Agent Christopher?" Rufus implores softly. No response. "Jiya?" No response.

It's hard to listen closely when Lucy's chattering away at the men and valiantly trying to diffuse the situation, but he shuts out the extra noise and just listens. That's when he hears it.

A faint crackle. Static.

Something's interfering with their comms. They've been cut off. They're on their own.

* * *

Nothing is going the way that it's supposed to.

They've surrendered their guns to the security guys, and they order them to remove their comms. Which they promptly smashed. Lucy's hopes shattered along with them. Not that they were doing much beforehand. She saw Rufus trying to communicate when she was trying to explain themselves. The pure dread on his face said it all: they were on their own.

Lucy walks in the middle between Rufus and Wyatt, all their hands up to show that they won't show any resistance. Security walks behind them, guns trained on their backs so they don't try anything.

She can't tell where they're being taken, all she knows is that they're tramping across the airstrip, darkness giving her no hints about their destination.

Lucy is smart. Everyone knows that. She knows that. She also repeating it over and over like mantra in her head. She knows that the best course of action is to stay silent, but she is overtaken by the gripping urge to lecture Wyatt into next week. The entire reason they're in this mess right now is because he shot someone.

Shot. Someone. Four times. And killed them. Lucy remembers acutely her back hitting the plane and a large hand covering her mouth to silence her. She can't forget the fear washing over her like a deluge of rainwater. It turned into a waterfall when the man said that Flynn has been waiting to have a conversation with her.

She also can't deny the relief that sprang to life inside her when Wyatt ripped the guy away from her.

But if she isn't denying her relief, then she can't deny her horror when Wyatt filled the man's chest with bullets. There had to be a better way, some alternative. Something that didn't lead to death. Or lead to them getting arrested by airport security and left floundering on their own.

Lucy's simmering anger served as a distraction, and when she comes back to, they are directly in front of one of the luggage containers of the airport. "Inside." A voice behind them demands, unyielding and hard as stone. What the hell?

"Are you sure we shouldn't—" another voice, more unsure, questions quietly.

"No. They've caused enough trouble. We'll take them to him after. Even her." The harsher voice is firm.

A ball of lead settles into Lucy's stomach. It's what she feared. Security measures had been set up months in advance. Garcia Flynn's plan had been in motion months in advance. Through contracting security companies and job positions at the airport, his men have infiltrated. They had months to build up a good reputation, trustworthiness within their area. And now they have her, Wyatt, and Rufus.

They don't have backup, or an extraction plan.

No, no, no. That line of thinking will only send her in a spiraling panic. She clenches onto her anger at Wyatt, using it to keep her above the thrashing waves of hysteria.

"Inside" the voice insists again, dripping with malicious intent.

"Aw, hell no." Lucy hears Rufus mutter from beside her. She silently agrees.

The gun barrel pressed firmly into the back of her head disagrees. Lucy gulps, ice singing along her veins. Fight isn't an option. Flight means a bullet in the back. Seems her brain picked freeze.

Wyatt's reaction is immediate, yet subtle. His muscles all tense, a predator ready to pounce. She sees a slight tremor in his hand, mustering up the Herculean strength to stay still because any movements and Lucy receives a bullet.

Lucy doubts they'll actually blow her brains out. They want to take her to Flynn. Maybe a shoulder? A leg? Neither option is desirable. Would they shoot Wyatt or Rufus instead? Way more undesirable.

The man at her back leans forward, his gun pressing further into her head with the movement. It's uncomfortable, threatening, and Lucy half expects to hear a clang from the gun barrel crashing into her skull. "I won't say it again." The man growls lowly. Rufus scrambles in first, but Wyatt stands stock still. His eyes find hers and she hopes her eyes can convey her message well enough. _It's okay, just listen._ He walks forward slowly, hands still up as he follows Rufus. The man behind her moves his gun to her back and gives her a little shove with it. Her body thaws enough to get inside the container.

She stumbles inside, all her breath whooshing out of her when the cool metal of the gun is removed from her body. She hadn't even realized she was holding her breath.

The interior is long and nearly bare, save for a few crates scattered here and there. Luckily for them, they aren't plunged into complete darkness, fluorescent portable lights dot the ground. Groaning metal alerts Lucy to the door closing, and she whips around. _NO._

The whole container is long, but the walls already feel too close. If that door shuts, she will be in full panic mode, unable to shut it off or restrain herself. No off button with that mode. Fear takes over again, and just like it did outside, it glues her to the spot. A voice in her brain is screaming to run for the entrance, to seek out the sliver of artificial light and run toward it as fast as she can. Her breaths are already shorter. Heavier.

Escape grows increasingly smaller. Little by little.

Almost there. Lucy's bracing her hands on her knees now. Her world has shrunken to that dot of light leaking from the runway. Her brain vaguely registers a worried Rufus next to her, lips moving without saying anything. Not anything that her mind has the capacity to register right now. Probably something anxious and along the lines of "are you okay?".

Halt. It stopped.

The world filters back in, particle by particle. Bit by bit. Atom by atom. The first words she hears aren't from Rufus or Wyatt, they're the men outside the box.

"Not all the way! We don't want to cut off their air supply and suffocate them. Flynn wants them _alive._ "

"There's plenty of air in there to last until morning."

"Not taking any chances. Leave it open. You, guard the door. If they try anything shoot. Try not to hit anything vital, and above all else, don't shoot the woman. Understood?"

The screw in her chest loosens. They won't be closed in completely. Thank God for small miracles. _And large ones,_ her mind whispers, Amy springing to mind.

Rufus and Wyatt's voices suddenly crash over her, startling all other thoughts out of her head. It's not concerned voices or calling her name anymore. They've somehow evolved from worrying about her to volleying sharp words back and forth.

"—not responding—" Rufus's voice in drenched with equal amounts of contempt and concern. She knows which is for whom.

"That's what happens—" Wyatt sounds condescending, as if having to explain something to a child. Rufus keeps talking over him, they're voices overlapping and staticky.

"Not natural—"

"It's called—"

"Rufus!"

"Sorry, guys," Lucy rasps, volume just above a whisper. Somehow, both men hear her and their fighting match ceases. She presses her hands into her knees and slowly straightens. "I'm—"

"Wildly claustrophobic?" Wyatt says it like a statement more than a question, smirk quirking the corner of his mouth. Which reminds her. She's angry. At him.

Before she can say anything, Rufus chimes in. "Okay, so, great. That is freaking great to know. Next time, can you tell us about a phobia before you have a panic attack because of it?" Lucy glares over at him and his lack of tact. He puts his hands up. "You nearly gave _me_ a panic attack." He defends, lumbering over to the far wall and sinking down onto a crate. Lucy doesn't bother with a response, her narrowed eyes communicating for her.

But she has bigger fish to grill. Specifically a blue-eyed fish with a penchant for guns. "You shouldn't have used your gun on that guy." Lucy declares, rounding on Wyatt.

"Oh, you mean the one I saved your ass with?" There he goes with that smirk again.

"We are surrounded by Flynn's guys, as I'm sure you know by now. You gave them the perfect opening to extricate us from the situation while maintaining their cover."

"Sometimes things get messy." He gives a shrug, nonchalant. Lucy can not believe what she's seeing right now. It has to be some sort of mirage. Maybe she did have a panic attack and passed out and now she's dreaming. Dreaming about Wyatt being a very big, careless ass.

"It is my job to make sure there is no mess." Lucy punctuates her words clearly, toe to toe with Wyatt.

"There's _always_ a mess," Wyatt's voice is harsh, his face hard. "that's the deal." His voice fades into a hushed, yet still angry, whisper at the end. She has to be dreaming, right? This is not the same man who was giving her food and insisting she get sleep before arriving. Not the same tender eyes. These words cannot actually be coming out of Wyatt's mouth. Then again, maybe it is. This is the same man that had to be told by the Director not to come to work until he was ready to let agents work on the Jessica case and his breath was clean of whiskey. Lucy scoffs in disbelief. "So now we make it up as we go. And we find Flynn. If it goes sideways, I take him out. Which, by the way, may require the use of a damn gun."

"So if that's your job, why did you spend so long staring at Kathryn?" Wyatt's face goes from simmering to stony in .2 seconds. He gives no response. Yeah, Lucy noticed that. How when Kathryn stepped out of the cockpit, Wyatt's face became entranced. How when she ran out of the plane, it took him way longer than she'd expect for him to follow her. The same man who killed someone easily, who refused to put his gun away when Lucy insisted. She thought he'd be stuck to her, almost smothering given that she was probably the most unstable person on the team at the moment. "What is it about her?" Lucy prods, persistent. Wyatt's face is closed off, and he ambles away to sit on a crate and lean against the wall, on the opposite side from where Rufus is. He thinks he can get away? Luckily for her, he sat down on the closest crate, which happens to have another right next to it. She parks herself there, leaning forward towards him.

Wyatt notices she's not going to let it go. He swallows. "Nothing."

Lucy doesn't believe that for a second. "I didn't think you be the type of solider to get distracted from the mission by a pretty face." It's a jab. She knows it. He knows it. Rufus knows it.

But it works, Wyatt's voice picking up right at the tail-end of her sentence. "She reminds me of my wife, okay?" Lucy is rendered speechless. That thought hadn't crossed her mind. Not once. "They even look alike, little bit." Wyatt admits. All of Lucy's anger has flown out the barely cracked door.

She can see it. Remembers the analyst's working on Jess's case, her face tacked up on the corkboard. Both blonde, both pretty. And he's sure that in order to be married to Wyatt, Jessica would have to be quite the woman. Stubborn and strong and taking no shit. Which Kathryn is. "Jessica's death was my fault," Wyatt admits quietly, a sheen of tears covering those blue eyes that were so full of fury just seconds before. A mist covering the mountain. A mountain of grief. "if I could just change that one—" Wyatt chokes off as more tears gather. His head falls against the wall. "So when I saw Kathryn, and knowing what's about to happen, I couldn't just let her…" he trails off. Then he lets out a huff, his eyes refocusing on her instead of some distant point only he could see. Maybe Jessica's face. He shakes his head and gets up, putting distance between them.

Lucy's aching heart throbs. After what just happened with Amy, she thinks she gets it. Gets him. Not that it excuses his ass-like behavior on this mission. She is still ticked about that. It's a weird feeling, like being bisected: half anger and the other half pity/understanding. All in all, Lucy does not like the emotions that Wyatt Logan evokes in her. She doesn't like it one bit.

* * *

Great. Rufus got free front row seats to the Wyatt and Lucy show. He's certain there are better things to be doing with their time than arguing. Although he guesses he can't talk, he did enough clashing with Wyatt before Lucy. At least on this particular mission.

God, he has permanent front row seats to the Wyatt and Lucy show for the foreseeable future. Joy.

He doesn't say anything, afraid to speak in case he added rain to the thunder and lightening storm of those two. He devotes a quarter of his attention to his their conversation, another to worry, anxiety, and panic, another to actually trying to puzzle a few things out, and another praying that he doesn't die today.

When Lucy mentions Kathryn, about half of his attention is diverted to them. He wants to know this answer too. Why it took him so long to take off after Lucy. He admits that he feels a tug in his gut when Wyatt mentions his wife. He knows about her of course. Well, as much as office gossip counts as morning. He also knows she died 5 years ago. Rufus never lost someone the way Wyatt has.

There was his father. Working himself into an early grave, eventually leaving him, Kevin, and Mom behind. He didn't have much time to grieve then, dedicating all his time to trying to keep their heads above water. To trying to get out of those slums.

He knows enough to know grief warps a person. He can't even imagine how destructive that grief can be if you blame yourself for the death of someone you loved. Doesn't want to. Wyatt obviously has this self-destructive grief down to an art.

He watches as Wyatt gets up and puts distance between himself and Lucy.

In this gigantic metal box.

No time to feel pity for Wyatt. Time to get out.

He doesn't know where to start, but he knows he does not want to die here. Or come face-to-face with Garcia Flynn. Both of which seem more and more likely with each minute that ticks on by.

Lucy.

That's where he starts. It all starts and ends with her, doesn't it? The Flynn expert, not to mention logical and calculating. "Lucy" he hisses lowly, not wanting the guard stationed outside their door to hear them. She looks over and Rufus jerks his head to indicate to her that she should come to him. She tilts her head, reminiscent of a small bird. Rufus's eyes flick to the door and he sees it click into place.

Like he said, smart woman.

She creeps over to him on tiptoes, Wyatt's gazing tracking her movements as they always seem to. "So, these are all Flynn's guys?" Rufus asks, whispering.

Lucy nods the affirmative, bending her head to be closer to his ear. "Kathryn says the security has been set up months in advance. Flynn planted his guys within airport security and security contract companies. They then had months to build up their cover. All the guys here, I think they're all Flynn's."

Rufus swallows the lump in his throat those words produce. Okay, enemy territory. Lots of terrorists.

No big deal.

"Are we still assuming that it's a bomb?" Rufus questions, unsure if he really wants to know the answer.

"A bomb makes the most sense, and with security being Flynn's guys, it'd be easy enough to do." Lucy admits wearily.

"Great, just great." Rufus mutters. "Where?"

"I don't know. It could really be anywhere. I assume they'd want to get it as close to the targets as they could."

"Basically, we're scrambling in the dark here, making guesses?"

"Calculated guesses." Lucy corrects.

"Right, calculated guesses. And we still don't know how to get out of here." Rufus sighs.

"I think I got that part covered." Wyatt speaks up, still on the other side of the container. He's at the front, peeking out of the cracked door. He stays there a few more second before coming over to them. "That guy out there doesn't expect resistance, and he looks inexperienced. I can take him." He says. "You guys just got to be ready to run."

"Are you crazy?" Lucy hisses, jumping to her feat. "He has a gun! You don't."

"I will soon enough." _Wait, what?_ Lucy's face reflects Rufus's shock. Rufus clamors his way to standing. "These men have been in on this for months and who knows how far Flynn's rot has spread here. The crates look like they've been here for a while. The locks are old pieces of crap. Flynn's men are cocky dicks." Wyatt explains. Lucy's face is lost. Rufus feels the same way. On a map, Lucy and he are on Greenland while Wyatt is somewhere over in Indonesia. They're not getting his point.

"Okay?" Lucy says questioningly.

"A lock that would be easy to pick with a hairpin." Wyatt says.

"I don't have that." Lucy admits, her face falling.

"No, but you have something else that will work." Wyatt grins.

"What?" Lucy asks apprehensively. Which Rufus gets. She crosses her arms over her chest and Wyatt follows the motion with his eyes. And stays there.

It's not like there's much to see with the bulk of the bulletproof vest eliminating most evidence of feminine curves. But Rufus still gets it. He gets it before Lucy does.

"I'm…I'm gonna go keep watch. Make sure the guy doesn't hear anything." Rufus stutters, booking it to where Wyatt was earlier.

Just because Rufus has front row seats doesn't mean he wants to be between those two when Lucy takes off her bra. Frankly, if he was between those two, he thinks he'd get electrocuted the second they looked at each other.

* * *

Rufus gets it, Lucy doesn't. Wyatt was hoping she'd get it on her own, so he wouldn't have to tell her. He can already imagine her reaction. A startled "what?", followed by an indignant "no!". Oh well. Not like he hasn't made her mad before.

Many times.

"Time off your bra." Wyatt whispers, when Rufus goes over to keep watch.

"What?" Just like he expected.

"I could open the piece of crap lock with a hairpin, or—"

"Underwire." Lucy finishes, nodding. Wyatt can't seem to help himself as his hands automatically find their way to the straps on her bulletproof vest. He tries to work as quickly as possible while being as quiet as he can be. When he's finished, he pulls it off her and she bolts away, leaving him standing there and holding her vest.

She faces away from him as she starts to unbutton her blouse. Wyatt can't find it in himself to turn away.

He should turn away. He should already be turned away. But he doesn't turn away.

Instead, he lays her vest on a crate and watches the sleeves of her blouse slip down her arms and reveal a creamy expanse of skin to his eyes. An ivory back.

With his eyes on her and unable to look away, Wyatt can no longer deny that he feels absolutely no attraction to Lucy Preston. There's something there. A spark.

Lucy gathers her shirt in front of her chest, to cover herself as she goes about unclipping her bra. Then she's looking over her shoulder, dark eyes and parted lips—and, yup, it's time for Wyatt to look away.

He looks down, Lucy moving in his peripheral. Unclasping, shrugging it down her shoulders and off her arms, and into her hands. He looks up as the bra comes flying toward him. _When was the last time that happened?_ Wyatt thinks ironically.

But he gets right to work when he catches it. Moving his mouth down and tearing a hole to extract the underwire. He shifts it out and tosses her bra back to her. Then he's across the room, wiggling the underwire in the lock. Rust flakes off the crappy piece of equipment.

 _Click, click._ The lock gives.

He really thought Garcia Flynn would be more careful. Especially if the man himself is here as his men are indicating.

He removes the lock and cracks open the crate, his hands itching for a gun. Light reveals the contents of the crate to be….

A list? Spare parts? The hell is that?

Wyatt isn't sure he cares. He just knows it's not a gun.

"Uh, guys?" Rufus hesitates, backing away from the entrance. "I think he heard us."

Rufus keeps backing away while Wyatt glances over to Lucy, still buttoning up her shirt. Time to do his job.

There's not much time to do much other than react and he's short a weapon. He read the guard as inexperienced and nervous, but Wyatt's scared to be wrong. If it was just him, he had no doubt he could take on the guy easy. But it's not. If he goes up against his guy, someone who might be trigger-happy, Rufus and Lucy could get caught in the crossfire. Firing a bullet in this metal contraption would be a disaster and someone would end up collateral damage.

But he's out of time and options. He quickly grabs the crate and flips it upside down, scattering its contents across the floor. Then he's running to where the door is cracked open. He gets there as the guy is taking his first steps inward, gun and eyes trained ahead.

Mistake.

The crate comes down over the guy's head. Wood splits and bursts, giving Wyatt a few measly splinters.

The guy goes down, his gun clattering out his hands and across the floor. That _was_ easy. Wyatt can't help the smirk that over takes his mouth. He crouches down, checking to make sure the guy is really down and out. He pulls his fist back and cracks it across the man's face.

"What'd you do that for?" Rufus yelps.

"Insurance." Wyatt grunts. As soon as he's done, he searches the man. A walkie, a few extra clips of ammo, and, of course, the gun on the ground. The gun finds its way into Wyatt's holster as soon as possible. "Rufus." Wyatt calls, tossing him the walkie. "Any use for that thing?"

Rufus flips it over in his hands, testing dials and knobs. "The only thing would be information and this guy doesn't seem to be in the loop we need to get into. Best to leave it here, there might be some tracking device in it. Our comms were disabled somehow, so they must have some advanced tech. I wouldn't risk taking it." Wyatt nods, trusting Rufus's judgement.

"What's all this?" Lucy asks. She's standing over the contents from the crate Wyatt took to their guard's head. She's all-buttoned up in her blouse but missing her vest.

That's the first order of business. Wyatt strides to where it lay on the crate and brings it over to her. She turns toward him, holding her hands out for it. Wyatt slides it on her, working on the buckles and straps for the second time that night. Lucy rolls her eyes at his silent insistence of securing her vest, but she doesn't stop him.

"Ready to answer my question now?" Lucy asks after Wyatt yanks the last strap into submission. She has her one eyebrow raised. And he is really close to her.

And she's asking about the contents of the crate. Which could be important. To the mission.

Right, the mission. Head back in the game.

"Don't know," Wyatt confesses. "but it's not a gun."

"Obviously." Lucy murmurs, kneeling on the ground to get a closer look. Rufus joins her. Wyatt doesn't think he'll be much help here. Lucy's pale fingers close over the list, quickly scanning the contents. She blanches. That can't be good.

"Lucy?" he asks.

"These are materials to make a bomb." Lucy rasps. Rufus drops one of the 'spare parts' like it's toxic.

"We already knew that." Wyatt prods, impatient. There's more.

"More than one bomb." She whispers.

 _Shit._

"We have to move. Now." Wyatt yanks Lucy and Rufus up.

"What are we supposed to do, we're surrounded by Flynn's guys." Rufus asks.

"The darkness will give us adequate cover. They don't know we escaped and won't be able to tell who. Also, harder to shoot. See, we got something on our side." Wyatt says with fake cheer.

"Yay." Rufus says in a voice that conveys the opposite.

"Until we get close to the plane, and the runway lights illuminate our face." Lucy worries at her lip with her teeth.

"Okay, we'll ignore Miss Pessimistic for the time being, and for my sanity." Rufus states. Lucy's head turns sharply, mouth opening to fire back at Rufus. They don't have time for that.

"Come on." Wyatt pulls both their arms, running out of the luggage container and toward the airplane.

* * *

Lucy sucks in desperate gulps of air as she, Wyatt, and Rufus run toward the plane. It's not the running part: running is actually a form of physical exercise that Lucy favors. The fact that there is a second bomb out there is stealing her breath right from her lungs. They are compressing with anxiety. Finding one bomb and diffusing it would be bad enough, but now they have to find two.

The ticking of a clock echoes in her head, hellbent on remind her how fast time is running out.

Faster. She needs to go faster. She pushes herself further, breath heaving as her feet pound against the pavement.

They're lucky. They haven't run into any of Flynn's men yet. They're probably all focused on the plane and the bomb, making sure their plan goes off without a hitch. They'll deal with that when they get there.

Wyatt will. Not her. She doesn't even have her gun anymore.

The runway lights are glowing orbs in the distant, hovering in her view. Closer, closer, closer—

Lucy is yanked backward, taken completely off balance and stumbles. She turns and thuds into a hard chest, breathing hard. It's reminiscent of the way Flynn man grabbed her from earlier. She should have let out a gasp of surprise or feel a flash of panic.

But she doesn't.

Because somehow, someway, she inexplicably knows that the solid chest behind her is Wyatt.

"What?" She whispers, breathless. From running. She hears the sound of Rufus breathing beside her and spies his silhouette, bent over his knees.

"You were pulling ahead, and we need to proceed with caution from here on out. We're going to be visible soon enough." Wyatt whispers, bent close to her ear so he can talk lowly. His breath caresses her skin in bursts as he attempts to catch his breath with the rest of them. At least he wasn't immune to the strain of running, or else he'd probably say something about being a trained field agent and telling them they were doing laps when they got back.

"Okay." Lucy whispers, expecting his arms to drop from around her. "Err… Wyatt?" He gets the message, stepping back and freeing Lucy. She didn't realize how cold it was outside until she was lacking his warmth. A shiver works up its way up her spine. "What now?"

Lucy almost jumps out of her skin when Wyatt's arm brushes by her as he creeps toward the plane. "I only see two guards with the plane. I'm not sure if we can get in without going through them." Wyatt says.

"No killing." Lucy tells him.

"They are terrorists, Lucy." Wyatt growls lowly.

"Wyatt." She begs, his name coming out as a plea packed with emotion.

"I'll try," Lucy can hear him forcing out the words through gritted teeth. "but if things get ugly, I won't hesitate." Wyatt warns.

"Yeah, we know." Rufus mutters, straightening. Lucy imagines that if she could see, there would be some icy daggers in Rufus's back.

"Come on." Wyatt grunts, waving them ahead. He stays in the lead, crouched down and creeping forward with care and silent footfalls.

As they approach the tail of the plane, Wyatt gestures for her and Rufus to stay there. He inches forward, clinging to the side of the plane. The closest man is right outside the steps to the plane's interior. It's beneficial for Wyatt, as he stays out of sight behind the man. Lucy peers beneath the plane from her vantage point, spying the other man on the other side, keeping guard.

"Something's not right." Lucy contemplates. Two guards. Makes no sense.

"What do you mean?" Rufus questions from beside her.

"Why only two guards?" Lucy asks. This is Flynn's big target, and they know he already has plenty of men here.

"Maybe everyone else went to report to their supreme cult master, the man himself." Rufus suggests. If Garcia Flynn really is here, it would make sense for him to have men with him and others reporting. But she knows that's not it. Something more is at play here. She feels it like a storm brewing above their heads, a sense of foreboding pooling in the air. "I can't tell if he's killing him or knocking him out." Rufus's comment drags Lucy from her wondering. Wyatt has an arm tight against the guard's neck. The guard struggles, scrabbling at his throat and kicking out. Wyatt lifts him off the ground slightly so that his feet don't make a noise and alert the other guard. In a few seconds, the guard goes limp and Wyatt's waving them over.

When they get there, Wyatt still has an armful of unconscious guard. "He's unconscious, right?" Rufus asks to reaffirm when they get over. Wyatt throws him a disbelieving look. "Right?"

"Yes." Wyatt hisses. "Now get in the plane and searching." He orders. Lucy wants to tell him that she's not a soldier, and she doesn't take orders from him. But they need to find that bomb, so she doesn't argue, and zips inside. "Quieter!" Wyatt hisses after her.

She and Rufus get inside the plane. "Where do we start?"

"Anywhere." Lucy pants. "It could be anywhere. Um… I'll start out here, you go back there." Rufus nods and follows her directions. She starts with the overhead compartments. Although it seems unlikely that the bomb would be there, she's checking everywhere. Lucy feels the plane jostle and looks back.

It's Wyatt, lugging the unconscious into the plane. "What are you doing?" Lucy exclaims.

"Oh yeah, let me leave this guy outside for his buddies and any of Flynn's other guys to see." Wyatt bites back, dragging the man further into the plane.

"Yes, and bringing him in here is such a brilliant idea!" Lucy's response is just as daggered.

"Where else was I supposed to put him, analyst?" he asks, more focused now on arguing with her than doing… something with the man he brought in.

 _Oh no._

The sound of the cockpit door opening is distinct and freezes Lucy in place. How did she forget about the pilot?

"You!" Kathryn Drummm blurts, and Lucy whirls to see her blue eyes swirling with unease and even a tinge of fear. "They told me about—Security!" She shouts, darting past the unsuspecting Lucy.

Wyatt's ready. He catches her by the arms and shushes her. "We are trying—" Wyatt grunts, struggling to subdue Kathryn without hurt her, while keeping his voice hushed. "We are trying to _save_ you."

Kathryn stops struggling, backing away. Wyatt lets her, but steps himself between her and the exit in case she's tricking them before making a break for it. Wyatt continues, "there is a bomb on this plane. We are trying to find it and diffuse it."

"They said you killed someone." Kathryn says.

"I did what I had to do to protect my team." Wyatt says, not denying or admitting the truth.

"How—how do I know that you're telling the truth?" Kathryn asks. "Real FBI? The good guys?"

"We can prove it." Lucy interjects, fumbling to extract her badge from her vest. She comes toward Kathryn, displaying it. "We _are_ FBI and there is a bomb on this plane. Garcia Flynn, the man we asked you about earlier, he's behind it. He infiltrated the security here, planting his guys months in advance. He wants to kill the people on board this plane: politicians, businessmen, ambassadors. It's a high level target."

"Please, Kathryn." Wyatt pleads. Her eyes flick to the man at his feet. He follows her line of sight, "Not dead, knocked out."

"You find the bomb, and I'll believe you." Kathryn acquiesces.

 _I can work with that,_ Lucy thinks. She scrambles around to the rest of the overhead compartments, and then down to look beneath the seats.

There it is.

It's compact, with a timer already ticking. Right below one the seats, yet tucked out of sight. "Wyatt." She calls, her palms sweating. She feels him drop down next to her, her eyes never straying from the bomb. He reaches under carefully and wraps his hand around it. He gives it a slight tug, and Lucy watches it give. Just a little bit. With a hard tug, it's in Wyatt's hand.

"Will you believe us now?" Wyatt asks while standing, displaying the bomb for Kathryn to see.

"Oh my god." Her eyes are saucer round and zeroed in on the destructive device.

"Have you ever diffused a bomb before?" Lucy asks Wyatt, using a seat to propel herself up to standing.

"I've seen it done." He says. Okay, _not_ comforting. "Helped Randy with one before. I should be able to do it." He says, dropping to his knees. It perches on the seat as Wyatt leans forward to examine it. Kathryn comes over to him and sinks to her knees beside him, mouth agape. "I got this. Find the second bomb."

"Second bomb?" Kathryn nervously asks. Lucy doesn't waste time responding. She goes back to searching the underside of the seats.

Nothing. She combs every inch of the cabin, inside and out, up and down, and every direction she can think of. Nothing. Rufus comes charging into the room from the back of the plane. He comes to a skidding halt when he notices Wyatt working on the bomb. "Anything?" Lucy really hopes the answer is yes.

"An impressive collection wine and other alcohol, but no bomb." He answers. The air stills in Lucy's lungs, refusing to move in and out. "Wait a minute, I only see one bomb. Are you telling me we are short a bomb?"

She's been missing the big picture. This whole time. Pieces were floating around, all waiting to be connected.

They're not missing the second bomb.

It's not on this plane.

Garcia Flynn wanted a diversion, a distraction. The second bomb was meant to be the first. They'd spend all their time searching for and incapacitating that bomb, leaving them with no time for the one he'd intended to be second. It was his insurance, the most dangerous one with high chances for civilian casualties.

She flipped the table, got to this one first. Oh God.

She needs to find that second bomb. _Now._

* * *

"It's not here." Lucy gasps, skin paper white. The panicked look in her eyes is the only warning before she's bolting out of the plane.

Again.

Someone was going to have to teach that woman to share with the group. And stay with the group, Rufus thinks. An elementary school concept. "Um…Wyatt?" Is Rufus supposed to go after her?

"Rufus, I kind of need to focus on diffusing this bomb." Wyatt calls over his shoulder, hunched over the tiny bomb. Did he not hear Lucy? Her sentence or her jostling steps as she left? One look at Wyatt's drawn face gives Rufus his answer. Great.

He looks between the door and Wyatt. Go after her? He'll be no use here, while Wyatt works on the bomb. He can actually be of use, helping Lucy look for the second one. Lucy needs him more than Wyatt does. He can't always count on Wyatt to tell him what choice to make.

Rufus makes up his mind and flies down the steps to the pavement. Where did she go? He turns, peering into the surrounding darkness. Where, where… a silhouette. Already too far away. Time to move. Rufus plunges into the darkness, chasing Lucy.

* * *

"Ask me something." Wyatt tells Kathryn.

"Like what?"

"Anything. It relaxes me to talk." Wyatt gingerly pulls a wire, feeling the fast thrumming of his heart.

"Okay… um, how about who exactly are you and how did you wind up with the FBI?"

"All right look, this may be hard to believe, but I'm gonna tell you the truth." He glances up at his work to see Kathryn's lovely face set in a serious expression. "I'm Buck Rogers on a mission from outer space." Wyatt pauses his work to look up at her, his lips pulling into a small smile. Her seriousness melts as she smiles. Wyatt wishes he had more time to just look at her, a woman that reminded him so much of Jess. Time, however, is not on their side as the clock continuously ticking down proves.

Also proven by the appearance of the second security guard.

Kathryn's scream comes as his only warning before the flash of a silver knife enters his line of sight.

He moves quickly, shifting his whole body to the side, narrowly avoiding getting slashed. What he can't avoid is the punch the man lands to his face. Wyatt doesn't have the luxury of recovery time. The man reaches to grab at the knife, but Wyatt elbows his face and knocks him back. The two become locked in a battle, Wyatt doing his best to keep the man away from Kathryn and the bomb. They trade punches, each man's legs coming up at intervals to hit the other in the gut. After a forceful punch, the man grabs Wyatt under the shoulders of his vest and propels him toward the doorway.

Wyatt's head knocks into the corner, feeling a trickle of blood to go along with the pain. He falls down. Come one, he thinks. This is certainly not the worst fight he's ever had to deal with, and he needs to get back up.

Wyatt hears a struggle above him, and feminine grunts. Fear invades his senses as he looks up.

It's Kathryn, wielding the knife from next to the bomb. She goes at the man, but it's clear that she has no clue how to fight. The man avoids her blow easily, grabbing her wrist and twisting the knife out of her hand. She's shoved to the side, down the aisle where the private refreshments are kept.

She's given Wyatt the time he needs. He's back on his feet and manages to get the first counter blow in on his opponent. He grips the man and shoves him against the side of the plane, landing another punch. And another. Then he receives a punch to the face, and a kick to the chest.

Wyatt stumbles backward, hitting the opposite wall. The man stalks after him, knocking him to the ground. The man is on top, but no way Wyatt is giving in. They trade blows, Wyatt's world never quite coming into focus from the onslaught.

"Hey!" A voice shouts, interrupting the series of grunts and groans from the two men. The next thing Wyatt knows, he's sputtering as liquid drips down his face. Dammit that cut on his head hurts like a real bitch now. He lets out a pained shout. Reaching up, Wyatt does his best to wipe the liquid off to keep it from dripping it into his eyes. His hands come away smeared with blood.

His eyes refocus just in time to see Kathryn, holding a short, broken bottle neck, kick the man in the side and shove him off Wyatt. He speedily connects the dots. She was shoved toward where Rufus said the wine was. The brilliant pilot grabbed a bottle and broke it against the man's face. A quick glance confirms small pieces of glass embedded in the man's face. Ouch.

She offers him a hand with her free hand, his brilliant woman glowing from the unflattering plane lights behind her. Wyatt gives her a hand, putting his other on the ground to push himself up.

Bad idea. He pulls his hand away with a hiss. Glass shards litter the ground and the palm of his hand is decorated with small cuts and gashes. "Sorry about that." Kathryn winces, grabbing his other hand and throwing her weight back to get Wyatt off the ground. As soon as he's on his own two feet, Wyatt snatches his hands back. He doesn't want his blood to stain his woman.

"Don't apologize." Wyatt says breathlessly, shaking his head back and forth. "I think you just saved me." Kathryn lets out a shy, sparkling smile.

"I'm sure you would have figured it out without me." She says. Their eyes meet like two waves crashing together in the middle of a storm. It's encompassing, consuming, and Wyatt doesn't think he'd mind drowning all that much.

But then he sees a flash of brown, deep and earthy and grounding. Eyes he was looking into earlier that night. Eyes that didn't let him drift off into the sky or dive head-first into the ocean. Eyes that brought out confessions and held poorly masked fear.

Lucy.

Bomb.

Mission.

Wyatt dives around Kathryn, breaking their connection. He gets to the bomb, examining it. Two wires. That's what he needs to cut to stop the timer. Looking around, he spots a knife, but that won't do. "Kathryn," he says frantically. "scissors?". He hears her scrambling but doesn't dare to look around away from the bomb. Her footsteps fade, and he counts his breaths until they return. She sinks down next to him, handing him sharp, red hand supply scissors. He grasps the two thin wires, black and red, and poises to cut them. His heart is pounding in his chest, a thumping jackhammer, and Wyatt sends up a quick prayer to God he's never really believed in.

He puts pressure on the scissors.

Cut.

The timer halts, it's glowing numbers stuck. He lets out a breath of relief.

"Don't shoot you idiot!" Kathryn screams. Wyatt spins on his knees and then to his feet, gun out and aimed in record time.

For the second time that night, he doesn't hesitate. The man has a gun out, and Kathryn is next to him, struggling to point it up and away from Wyatt. He takes aim quickly, trusting his instinct and gut, before he pulls the trigger.

Once. Twice.

The man falls, and Kathryn is left standing and holding his gun. An empty gaze, open mouth, and two bullet wounds to the chest let Wyatt know that the man is dead. Blood pours from the wounds, staining the creamy interior with a startling amount of scarlet.

The gun clatters from Kathryn's hands, landing in the increasing pool of red. No one moves for a minute or two, both breathing hard. "Lucy!" Kathryn breaks the silence. "And… the other agent. He didn't tell me his name. They said something about another bomb, they left. While you were dealing with this one."

Alarms blare in Wyatt's mind. Rufus. Lucy. He wastes no time grabbing Kathryn's hand and pulling her along. "Come on!" He rushes down the plane steps.

Where does he go from here? He looks all around, but he can't see either. "Did they say anything about where the second bomb was?" Wyatt asks Kathryn, gripping her upper arms.

"No, they just ran out…" Kathryn trails, off her eyes locked on a point in the distance. Wyatt whips around.

Commotion. The blurry shapes of people running. It's coming from the actual airport, a sizeable distance between that and the private plane. But Rufus is over there. And Lucy. He knows it.

So he starts running.

* * *

He gets there out of breath, panting and sweating but there. People are running toward the private airstrip all around him, some lugging their suitcases and others just taking themselves to safety. Kathryn is behind him, unable to keep up. He has no doubt she'll catch up, but Wyatt's main worry is Rufus and Lucy. He starts shoving through the crowd, going the opposite direction as everyone else, the tide attempting to take him back the way he came. "Rufus! Lucy!" He yells over the din. "Rufus! Lucy!" He cups his hands around his mouth. "Lucy!"

"Wyatt!" He hears it faintly. It drifts to him over the crowd. He latches onto it.

"Rufus!" Wyatt screams.

"Wyatt!" It surfaces again. Wyatt needs to get further in. "Wyatt!" Wyatt shoves and pushes his way toward the voice. Wyatt stumbles in his haste, the crowd taking him. Steeling himself, Wyatt gets his feet back under him and goes back to fighting the tide. "Wyatt!" It's closer.

Wyatt knocks right into him, the crowd practically thrusting Rufus right into his arms. "Rufus!" Wyatt yells over the crowd, keeping pressure on his shoulders so that they both stay grounded. The mad scramble to escape starts to part around the two men.

Wyatt takes quick inventory of Rufus. The man looks decent other than his dark eyes which are full to the brim with a myriad of panic, worry, and relief. "What happened?" Wyatt shouts.

"The second bomb, it's not on the private plane. Flynn planted it in the airport as insurance. He wanted us to discover this one first so we'd so preoccupied with this one that we didn't get to the one on the plane in time. Lucy figured it out!" Rufus shouts over the clamoring of people. Wyatt's stomach drops out of his body.

"Are you hurt?"

"Flynn had a lot of guys concentrated around here. We couldn't fight them off. Lucy crept as close as she could before she started shrieking about the bomb, trying to warn people. Flynn's guys saw us. One shot me, right in the vest. There's gonna be a nasty bruise tomorrow. But it didn't get too bad becuase the real airport security showed up, the good ones. And the people running from the bomb caused chaos and confusion." Wyatt hangs onto Rufus's every word. He was shot? Shame claws its way up Wyatt's throat. Rufus is lucky it hit his vest. If it hadn't… Wyatt swallows hard, blocking out the sight of a bleeding Rufus from his mind. But he wasn't bleeding, he was okay. He was—

A thousand needles pierce Wyatt's skin as he his grip on Rufus tightens. "Lucy! Is she okay? Where is she?" Wyatt screams, tingling with terror.

"I lost her in the crowd. I tried—" Rufus looks devastated and Wyatt knows he's not the only one here feeling these pins and needles of horror at Lucy's absence. Wyatt doesn't have time to let Rufus finish his sentence.

"Stay here! Help people get out!" Wyatt orders and then he's pushing his way past Rufus. Past everyone. He needs to get to Lucy. "Lucy! Lucy!" Wyatt shouts. "Lucy!"

* * *

Lucy's close, so close to the actual building itself. The crowd is thicker here, as people pour out the doors. Two security guards hold the doors open, given that this is a restricted access exit onto the private airstrip. People are fleeing, clutching handbags and children close to themselves. But there's still too many, too close.

Lucy continues to push through, fighting against the grand and overpowering tide. A forceful and wayward shove propels Lucy to the ground. She catches herself on her hands, scrapes opening up with burning stings. A few running feet trample her hands, jolting pain up her arms. Yanking her hands back toward her body, Lucy springs upward, almost going right back down due to her imbalance and the push and pull of the chaotic crowd. She manages to stay upright, pushing forward. She keeps going, colors and faces blurring around her.

Eventually, she pushes past people to open space, almost crashing to the ground again with her momentum. Shocked, Lucy looks up to see the security guards at the door ushering just a few people through. The last ones. Hope cracks open a canyon in Lucy's chest. Almost everyone is clear. Now she just has to find the bomb.

"Lucy!" Lucy whips around at the sound of her voice floating faintly over the crowd. Wyatt? She stands there, indecisive. He knows how to diffuse a bomb. She doesn't. But they need to find it first. There's no time to wait for him. Lucy turns around, starts running toward the building—

Lucy's a reader. Plenty of books talk about how time slows down in these moments. They never said how it does both. Everything moving so fast yet so incredibly slow.

She hears and sees it first. A giant explosion, fire and smoke pluming and swirling at the airport. Lucy would swear that she saw it all happen, standing firmly on solid ground. That she went flying backward after. But she knows logically that as soon as the bomb denotated, her feet were off the ground and she was flying backward.

She hits the ground hard, her lungs compressing and leaving no room for oxygen. Her head cracks against the pavement, sending the world into a spinning watercolor image of flashing darkness. She can't hear anything over the ringing in her ears.

Pain pulses through her veins, faster than her heartbeat. The only sensation she's aware of. Wait, maybe not. She's not completely sure, but she thinks the tangy, coppery taste might just be blood.

Time runs together, becoming irrelevant and untraceable. She has no concept of time or how long she's been there, on the ground. She doesn't think she could move even if she tried.

Then she's moving upward. Everything's spinning, her stomach lurches, and the ringing in her ears intensifies.

Hands, she feels them wrapped around her upper arms. But she can't tell who they belong to. She can't see. She shakes her head from side to side, as if that will help her vision clear. The throbbing in her skull pounds harder. She grimaces and might let out a cry. But she can't tell.

Her hands fail, trying to grab at something solid to hold onto. They close over something, and Lucy drags herself closer, holding on tight. She squeezes her eyes shut, willing her sight to return to her. When she opens them, shapes and colors swirl around her. Improvement.

Blue. That's the first color she's aware of. Blazing and frantic. That vivid shade of blue she's never seen anywhere other than Wyatt's eyes.

She latches onto that blue, using it as her focal point. The rest of his face gradually settles into normalcy. Her nails dig into whatever she's holding to keep herself grounded. His hands tighten in response.

Him. She's holding onto him and he's keeping her upright. She's suspended 100 feet above the ground and the only thing keeping her from crashing back to it is him. His face. She's never been more glad to see that face.

But… he's saying something. His lips are moving. Her world is still ringing loudly, all other sounds muffled. She can't hear a single thing he's saying. Her eyebrows draw together and her brow crinkles, trying to read his lips. To her, he might as well be speaking Slavic. Nothing clicks, she can't piece anything together. No two syllables. Trying only makes her head hurt more.

Accepting that it's pointless, her eyes stray from his face, trying to get her bearings on he surroundings. Less than half a second, and she's back to Wyatt's face. His hands are on her neck now, his fingertips brushing her cheek. He moves her head back to him, his hands going higher to cup around her face and block out the rest of the world.

Are you okay? Is that what he's saying. She's not sure. She starts shaking her head.

Bad idea.

She starts moving her lips. She can't hear her own voice, isn't sure if she's speaking or if air is the only thing that's leaving her mouth. But she has to tell him something. Something important. The people. They need help now. More than her.

Wyatt gives her head the tiniest shake, forcing her eyes back to his. Now he's the one saying something. Something important by his expression. He repeats it. His hands drop from her and he's gone. Lucy almost pitches forward onto the pavement without Wyatt there to hold her up.

" _Stay here."_ The echo of Wyatt's voice is faint, but unmistakable. It beats against the hazy curtain hanging between her senses and the rest of the world. Other sounds beat against the curtain too: yells and cries and the acrid smell of smoke.

Stay here? How? She needs to help people. People need her help. She can power through this throbbing in her head, when there are people that need help.

Her first step sends the world back into a fuzzy mess. Teetering, tilting. She stays on her feet.

"Lucy!" her name again. Soon, Rufus skids into her line of sight. "Lucy…" he keeps talking, but too fast for her sluggish brain to process.

"People, Rufus. Help them." Lucy says, her voice strained and tired. Rufus keeps talking, his hand going to the back of her hand. He peels it away, looking at it horrified and bring it around for her to see.

Blood. It's sticky with blood. Hers? Right, it has to be hers. "I'm okay." Lucy reassures to a Rufus that doesn't look like he believes her in the slightest. "Her." Lucy points to a little girl that she sees, unsteady on her feet and staring around at the scene in shock. "Go help her." Rufus doesn't budge. "Rufus, please." He looks into her eyes, then at his bloody hand. After a few heavy seconds, he nods. He rushes to the little girl, scoops her up, and takes her away from the scene.

She… she should be doing the same. If only she could think clearly. Who can she help? Lucy turns around, still unsteady on her feet—

And comes face to face with Garcia Flynn. Fear chokes her like water clogging her lungs, making it difficult to suck in air. "It's time we talked. Face to face." His voice comes through without static or ringing. It's ruff and tinged with his natural Croatian accent. Her nerve ends all fire, shocked.

She's spent months on ends staring at his picture, been sent on wild goose chases by his man, read his handwriting meant only for her. But hearing his voice, seeing him face-to-face, it makes her tremble in a way she can't explain. "You need to understand who and what you're dealing with." He says, coming closer. Her breathing becomes unfiltered, her scared gasps grating her injured eardrums.

"I understand that—that you hurt innocents today. Tried to burn everything to the ground." She pants. For some reason, her own voice won't register.

"That depends on your point of view, Lucy." Well, at least his answer means that she's speaking even if she can't hear it.

"I thought I knew you, understood you." Lucy snaps, eyes locked on his, dark just like her own. "but after what you did to my sister—"

"I didn't touch your sister, Lucy." Flynn says, head cocked in confusion. Lucy's laugh is almost maniacal, insane.

"Then who did? _Rittenhouse?_ " She hisses the name through her teeth. He reacts. Eyes flaring, jaw clenching.

"They're very real, Lucy. I thought you'd know that by now." His tone is chastising. Lucy scoffs. "Just ask them why they really chose you." He tells her. Lucy shakes her head, all pain forgotten. Chose for what? She doesn't understand. And she's scared. Feeling so helpless, hardly able to stand, robbed of her senses. She doesn't stand a chance against him.

"For—for what?" she sputters.

"Come on, Lucy, you already know." Flynn raises his eyebrows at her. Her brain is far too sluggish to keep up. It's like sloshing through a half-flooded jungle, quicksand pulling at her feet. Her mouth opens, no words coming out. She watches him, focused on her.

Flick. His eyes flicker upward and a twinge in her gut tells her something's about to happen, to run, but she can't. She's too slow. He grabs her, twisting her she her back is against him. A noise of surprise leaves her throat and her world blurs with the quick movement, her head battered. Her hands comes up against his arm, unable to do anything. The pressure on her windpipe is minor, more than enough room to breathe and speak.

Wyatt. He's there. Gun out and aimed at them, blood dried on his face. Was that there before? He doesn't look the same as before, when he killed the security guard. It's nearly imperceptible, but she senses the hesitation. If he shoots, he's far more likely to hit her than Flynn. She's the human shield covering most of his body. "I know for a fact that you're not going to shoot." Flynn announces, gun drawn next to her head, barrel pointed toward Wyatt.

"Wyatt." She whispers. Even she's not sure what she's asking. Take the shot, don't take the shot? To save her? Not to let her die here? Wyatt tilts his head at her and in a split second, he shifts his gun away from her shoots.

 _Crack!_ Then she's being flung away by Flynn, a cry ripped from her vocal chords. _Crack!_ Another gunshot as she hits the ground. Again. Her knees crumple to the side, her hands meet the ground next, and then her head hits again. The world explodes in fresh, blinding pain.

* * *

Flynn shoots, flinging Lucy to the side, into safety, and Wyatt ducks. He hits the ground and rolls back into a standing position. But Flynn's gone. What was that noise behind him? He turns—

Kathryn. She caught up. The breath sticks in Wyatt's throat as he run to her. "Kathryn—" he calls.

"I'm fine." She calls. "It's only the shoulder, go get him!" Wyatt stops and confirms: her hand is pressed hard against the blood blooming from the shoulder of her other arm. She frantically waving him away.

"Go, Wyatt!" Rufus calls, running toward Kathryn. Wyatt lets out a breath. Thank god, Rufus has her. Wyatt spins around, searching for Flynn. It takes him longer than he should. He was much further from the blast than Lucy, but he still got knocked on his ass. He spots the tall man, slipping out toward the private airstrip. To finish what he came here for?

Wyatt runs after him, through the still shell-shocked and frozen people all around the blast site. When he bursts through the other side of the crowd, he can't see anyone. The sky is lightening, as the first streaks of dawn bleed into the sky He lost him.

The desire to turn around, to Kathryn and his team is strong, but Flynn could still be heading for the plane, just somewhere he can't see. He peers at the plane. Is that—? It is. The surveillance van Jiya and Christopher were manning. Christopher is out of the van, gun tucked into a holster at her side, and… surrounded by airport security transport vehicles. All the men form a circle around Christopher, hanging onto her words. Suddenly, the break away, fanning out and guarding the plane.

Wyatt spins on his heel. Christopher has this handled, she has the actual airport security with her and who knows how many of Flynn's guys are still standing after the chaos of the blast. Besides, Wyatt reasons, Flynn wants to live to bomb another day. He's probably gone by now.

Wyatt bolts back the way they came. Flashing red lights and the wail of sirens alerts Wyatt to the arrival of ambulances. When he gets back through the crowd, he can see Rufus handing Kathryn over to an EMT. Good. She's taken care of. But, where's Lucy? Flynn flung her away from him… he thought she'd be with Rufus. Unless… no.

It doesn't take him long and he can't get there fast enough. She's crumpled on the ground, her blood splotched on the pavement. No, no, no. She looks too small, and too pale, and goddammit! It's no supposed to be her. Above all else, it should be him. He deserves it more than her. He knows that. He's the team's protector. And he failed them.

He drops to his knees beside her, drawing her head into his lap. Her eyes are open. Barely. They're flickering, unseeing. "Help!" Wyatt screams at the EMTs. "Over here!" But it's chaotic, noise buzzing all around and injured civilians litter the premises. A touch on his face brings him back to the woman in his lap. "Lucy?" he whispers. Her hand brushes his face, a cool caress. Her eyes, at half-mast, are fixed on him.

"Wyatt?" she croaks. Wyatt swallows thickly, giving the slightest nod. Her corners of her lips turn up in the smallest smile he's seen. "Good." Her hand slips, falling boneless back to the ground. Her lids obscure the lovely brown of her eyes. No, no, no! Panic races through his blood.

"Lucy! Lucy! Open your eyes. Stay awake for me." Wyatt pleads. Her eyes flicker. Still closed. "Lucy!" he's louder this time.

"Sir, we need to take her." Wyatt looks to the foreign voice in shock. An EMT, Rufus beside them breathing hard. "Sir." The man repeats, other EMTs pushing a stretcher over behind him. Wyatt slips his hand gently beneath Lucy's knees and back. He staggers up. She's so much lighter than she should be. He lays her gently on the stretcher, her eyes still heart-stoppingly shut. "Sir, please step away." The EMT requests. Then they're flocking Lucy, their voice dissolving into medical jargon and orders. Oxygen, blood, head trauma.

Letting go of Lucy, watching them wheeling her toward the ambulance, is the hardest thing he's done in years.

* * *

 **Thank you guys so much for reading! Please leave a review, they give me life! Leave any comments, criticisms, suggestions, etc. (Something that TheVelvetDusk said in a comment made it's way into this chapter, so you never know) ;)**


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